Tech billionaire Elon Musk announced on Monday the launch of Grokipedia, his vision of a rival to the online encyclopedia Wikipedia, which he has accused of ideological bias.
Musk, in a post on his social media platform X, said the site was now live. It features a layout with a search bar and source-cited articles and was developed by his artificial intelligence firm, xAI.
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.
"Version 1.0 will be 10X better, but even at 0.1 it's better than Wikipedia," he added, though users quickly noticed that some entries appear to draw from Wikipedia articles.
Tech website The Verge pointed out that the Grokipedia entry on Apple's MacBook Air includes a note stating it was "adapted" from Wikipedia.
Musk, known for his right-leaning views, has long accused Wikipedia of political bias, alleging it leans left.
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."
Grokipedia's release had been scheduled for the end of September but was delayed by the U.S. entrepreneur to "purge out the propaganda," Musk said in a separate X post.
The content of Grokipedia is generated by artificial intelligence and the generative AI assistant Grok.
"We're still in the process of understanding how Grokipedia works," the Wikimedia Foundation, which runs Wikipedia, told The Verge, noting that many AI companies rely on human-written sources such as Wikipedia.
Grokipedia's name references Musk's xAI chatbot Grok, which he has described as an AI system that should be "truth-seeking" and "politically neutral."
The chatbot, however, has sparked controversy in recent months over anti-Semitic remarks, which xAI attributed to a programming error.
Articles on Grokipedia are marked as "fact-checked by Grok," though it remains unclear how that process works or which sources the AI relies on. AI-generated content is often prone to so-called hallucinations, plausible but inaccurate information.
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.
