WEB DESK: Elon Musk’s artificial intelligence company, xAI, has unveiled a new online encyclopedia called Grokipedia, a direct challenger to Wikipedia, which the tech billionaire has long accused of harbouring ideological bias.
Launched on Monday, the site — currently labelled as version 0.1 — already hosts more than 885,000 articles, a considerable start compared to Wikipedia’s more than seven million English entries. Musk announced that a version 1.0 would soon follow, describing it as “ten times better” than the current version and claiming it already surpasses Wikipedia in quality.
“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 towards that goal,” Musk said in a post on his social media platform, X.
Delay to ‘purge propaganda’
Grokipedia’s launch was initially scheduled for the end of September but was postponed to remove what Musk called “propaganda.” The entrepreneur said the delay was necessary to ensure the platform reflected his broader vision of factual and unbiased information.
The site’s content is powered by artificial intelligence, particularly through xAI’s chatbot Grok, which Musk introduced as a humorous yet informative assistant integrated into X. A Grokipedia page about Musk himself describes him as a figure who has “influenced broader debates on technological progress, demographic decline, and institutional biases, often via X,” while noting that he has faced “criticisms from legacy media outlets that exhibit systemic left-leaning tilts in coverage.”
A long-running feud with Wikipedia
Musk’s criticism of Wikipedia is not new. In 2024, he accused the platform of being “controlled by far-left activists” and urged people to stop donating to it. Earlier this year, he argued that Wikipedia should not be used as a credible reference for X’s Community Notes, claiming it was “extremely left-biased.”
Founded in 2001, Wikipedia operates as a non-profit platform run by volunteers and supported by public donations. It describes itself as a collaborative project committed to presenting information from a “neutral point of view.”
Musk’s Grokipedia, however, aims to replace that volunteer-driven model with AI-generated knowledge. Whether it can achieve the neutrality Musk promises — or simply mirror his own worldview — remains to be seen.