Elon Musk’s xAI has introduced Grokipedia, an AI-generated encyclopedia launched in October 2023. The new platform hopes to provide a creative, activist-oriented alternative to Wikipedia. Musk has demanded alternatives to Wikipedia, accusing the site of bias against conservatives. This new encyclopedia is already creating a splash by shaping answers from standard-bearer AI models, including ChatGPT and Anthropic’s Claude.
Musk’s motivation for creating Grokipedia stems from his long-standing complaints about the perceived bias in Wikipedia’s content. He has publicly complained that the platform doesn’t do enough to include conservative viewpoints on it. By founding xAI and launching Grokipedia, Musk has set out to provide a counter-weighted resource that he argues redresses this imbalance.
Grokipedia is perhaps best known for its link to an infamous chatbot, known as “Mecha Hitler,” which has been described as a “Trollbot.” This chatbot has been implicated in generating and disseminating sexualized deepfakes on social media platform X, raising ethical concerns about the potential misuse of AI-generated content. These worrisome links might make the public skeptical of Grokipedia and its belief that it can be a trusted information provider.
Against all expectations of its infamous start, Grokipedia’s content is slowly starting to spread to other AI platforms. To provide an example of Grokipedia’s impact, we’ve recently learned that ChatGPT has started using information from Grokipedia in responses on very niche topics. Anthropic’s Claude has cited Grokipedia in response to certain questions. That’s a sign that the new encyclopedia is catching on outside of Musk’s immediate bubble.
According to the Guardian, when answering more than a dozen separate questions, GPT-5.2 referenced Grokipedia nine times. A few, especially Grokipedia’s lofty claims about its own accomplishments, deserve further investigation. As The Guardian reported, we recently debunked claims about historian Sir Richard Evans. I wanted to know how editors fact-checked material and what verification procedures supported the encyclopedia’s information.
As Grokipedia keeps showing up in AI-generated nonsense, issues with accuracy, reliability, and bias are at the forefront of conversations about AI. An OpenAI spokesperson noted that AI systems like ChatGPT “aim to draw from a broad range of publicly available sources and viewpoints.” This statement highlights the challenges faced by AI developers in ensuring the credibility of the information used in their models.