Musk launches Grokipedia to rival ‘left-biased’ Wikipedia

Tesla CEO Elon Musk attends the public memorial service for right-wing activist Charlie Kirk at State Farm Stadium in Glendale, Arizona. (AFP)

• The launch came with the promise of a newer version 1.0, which Musk said would be “10X better” than the current live site, which he claimed is already “better than Wikipedia”
• Musk has been a regular critic of Wikipedia, in 2024, he accused the site of being “controlled by far-left activists” and called for donations to the platform to cease

NEW YORK: Elon Musk’s company xAI launched Grokipedia on Monday to compete with online encyclopedia Wikipedia, which he has accused of ideological bias.
The site dubbed version 0.1 had more than 885,000 articles by Monday evening, compared to Wikipedia’s more than seven million in English.
The launch came with the promise of a newer version 1.0, which Musk said would be “10X better” than the current live site, which he claimed is already “better than Wikipedia.”
“The goal of Grok and Grokipedia.com is the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth. We will never be perfect, but we shall nonetheless strive toward that goal,” he said on X following the launch.
Grokipedia’s release had been marked down for the end of September, but was delayed by the US entrepreneur to “purge out the propaganda,” Musk said in a separate X post.
Musk has been a regular critic of Wikipedia. In 2024, he accused the site of being “controlled by far-left activists” and called for donations to the platform to cease.
In August, he said “Wikipedia cannot be used as a definitive source for Community Notes, as the editorial control there is extremely left-biased.”
The content of Grokipedia is generated by artificial intelligence (AI) and the generative AI assistant Grok.
A Grokipedia article dedicated to Musk states that the Tesla and SpaceX CEO has “influenced broader debates on technological progress, demographic decline, and institutional biases, often via X,” amid what the page says are “criticisms from legacy media outlets that exhibit systemic left-leaning tilts in coverage.”
Created in 2001, Wikipedia is a collaborative encyclopedia managed by volunteers, largely funded by donations, and whose pages can be written or edited by Internet users.
It claims a “neutral point of view” in its content.
AFP has reached out to Wikipedia for comment.