Elon Musk Launches Grokipedia to Compete with Wikipedia, Which He Claims is Left-Leaning

Elon Musk and his company xAI launched Grokipedia on Monday, presented as a competitor to the online encyclopedia Wikipedia, which has been accused of ideological bias by some Republicans in the United States.

The version was numbered 0.1 and by Monday evening had already amassed more than 885,000 definitions, compared to over 7 million in English on Wikipedia.

In a post on X, Elon Musk promised that a 1.0 version would arrive soon, claiming it would be 'ten times better' than 0.1, which he already believes is 'better than Wikipedia'.

A week prior, the entrepreneur had decided to delay the launch of Grokipedia by a few days, originally announced for the end of September, citing the need for 'additional work to purge propaganda'.

Like several Republican leaders, Elon Musk has been criticizing Wikipedia for years. In 2024, he accused the site of being 'controlled by far-left activists' and called for a stop to donations to the platform.

'The goal of Grok and (Grokipedia) is the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth,' stated the world's richest man, clarifying that the encyclopedia is open-source. 'Anyone can thus use it for anything for free.'

- "Systemic Bias" -

The content of some articles on Grokipedia reflects a certain bias in results, as seen in the page dedicated to Elon Musk.

In the initial summary paragraphs, the platform states that the head of Tesla and SpaceX has 'influenced public debate' on several issues, which has led to 'criticism from traditional media showing left-leaning tendencies in their coverage'.

Concerning the civil rights movement 'Black Lives Matter', Grokipedia states in its introduction that it has 'mobilized millions of people'.

'However, these protests led to riots, (...) the most costly in insurance history for property damage, in addition to over 25 deaths and accelerated urban decline in affected areas,' the encyclopedia continues.

It mentions much further down in the article the figures from Acled, an organization that compiles data on conflict zones, revealing that 93% of the movement's protests had been peaceful, against 5% marked by 'participant violence'. Before questioning these statistics, it accuses them of 'underestimating the rioters'.

Another example is the page dedicated to conservative commentator Tucker Carlson, highlighting his 'role (...) in exposing systemic biases in traditional journalism'. It references an article from Newsweek that only mentions these biases in quotes from Tucker Carlson himself.

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.

Grokipedia's content, on the other hand, is generated by artificial intelligence (AI) and the generative AI assistant Grok but also cites several sources on each page.

In April, the federal prosecutor of Washington, Ed Martin, who has since been replaced, requested documents from the Wikimedia Foundation, which oversees Wikipedia.

He expressed a desire to determine whether Wikimedia was indeed entitled to the tax exemption granted to foundations.

The prosecutor appointed by Donald Trump denounced 'the manipulation of information' of which he believed Wikipedia was guilty, claiming the platform sought to 'mask propaganda'.

In late August, two Republican representatives in the House, James Comer and Nancy Mace, opened an investigation into 'organized maneuvers (...) to influence American opinion (...) by manipulating Wikipedia articles'.

The birth of Grokipedia has been welcomed by several right-wing figures, including the ultranationalist Russian ideologue Alexander Dugin, who described the article about him as 'neutral', 'objective', and 'fair', while asserting that Wikipedia's portrayal is, in his view, 'defamatory'.