On October 27, 2025, Elon Musk, the billionaire entrepreneur and owner of xAI and the social media platform X, launched Grokipedia—a new online encyclopedia he touts as a direct competitor to Wikipedia. The launch, which Musk announced on his social media platform, marks a bold foray into the world of collaborative knowledge bases, promising to deliver “the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth.” But as the dust settles from the initial rollout, questions abound about Grokipedia’s content, motivations, and the broader battle over who gets to define truth on the internet.
Grokipedia’s debut was anything but subtle. Musk, never one to shy from grand gestures, declared that version 0.1 was already “better than Wikipedia,” and promised that an imminent version 1.0 would be “10X better.” The site, named for xAI’s chatbot Grok, boasts a minimalist interface reminiscent of Wikipedia’s own, but with a fraction of the content—just over 885,000 articles at launch, compared to Wikipedia’s more than 7 million in English alone, according to UPI and the South China Morning Post.
The rollout was not without hiccups. On launch day, the site briefly crashed before coming back online, a reminder that even tech titans aren’t immune to the perils of high-traffic debuts. Still, Musk’s ambitions are cosmic—literally. On X, he mused about preserving copies of Grokipedia “etched in a stable oxide in orbit, the Moon and Mars to preserve it for the future.”
Unlike Wikipedia, which is famously written and edited by a global network of volunteers, Grokipedia’s articles are generated by Musk’s Grok AI, an artificial intelligence model developed by xAI. The extent of human involvement in editing or curating Grokipedia’s content remains unclear. Users are provided with an option to send feedback if they spot errors, but there’s little transparency about how corrections are handled or who, if anyone, reviews them. As reported by TNND and the Associated Press, some articles appear to be adapted directly from Wikipedia, raising questions about originality and sourcing.
One thing is clear: Grokipedia’s launch is as much a political statement as it is a technological experiment. Musk and several prominent voices on the American right have long accused Wikipedia of ideological bias, particularly a left-leaning slant in its coverage of political figures and topics. Republican lawmakers even launched an investigation in August 2025 into alleged manipulation in Wikipedia’s editing process, citing concerns about neutrality and the influence of volunteer editors on the narratives AI systems learn from. White House AI czar David Sacks echoed these sentiments, calling Wikipedia “hopelessly biased” and decrying what he described as an “army of left-wing activists” maintaining the site’s biographies and resisting corrections.
Grokipedia’s own entry on Wikipedia doesn’t mince words, accusing the older site of “systemic ideological biases—particularly a left-leaning slant in coverage of political figures and topics.” Musk himself has called for people to stop donating to Wikipedia, charging that it is “controlled by far-left activists.”
But how does Grokipedia actually differ from its rival in practice? Early comparisons reveal stark contrasts, especially in how contentious subjects are handled. For example, Wikipedia’s biography of Musk describes him as a “polarizing figure” who has been “criticized for making unscientific and misleading statements, including COVID-19 misinformation and promoting conspiracy theories, and affirming antisemitic, racist, and transphobic comments.” The article also notes an increase in “hate speech and the spread of misinformation” on X (formerly Twitter) following Musk’s acquisition in 2022.
Grokipedia, by contrast, paints a much rosier picture of its founder, stating that Musk “has influenced broader debates on technological progress, demographic decline, and institutional biases.” It describes his stewardship of X as a time when he “prioritized content moderation reforms amid criticisms from legacy media outlets that exhibit systemic left-leaning tilts in coverage.” Notably, Grokipedia’s Musk article omits the critical commentary found on Wikipedia, opting instead for a narrative that emphasizes his achievements and reformist credentials.
The differences are even more glaring in articles about recent history. Grokipedia’s entry on George Floyd, whose death in 2020 sparked a nationwide reckoning over police conduct and racism, begins by highlighting Floyd’s criminal record and the drugs found in his system at the time of his death—details that, while factual, are foregrounded in a way that shifts the narrative focus. Wikipedia, meanwhile, opens its article by describing Floyd as a man “murdered by a white police officer,” centering the event that catalyzed mass protests. Grokipedia also refers to the protests as “extensive civil unrest… including riots causing billions in property damage,” while citing sources that, according to AP, do not actually support these claims. When pressed for comment about such discrepancies, xAI’s media contact responded automatically with the phrase, “Legacy Media Lies.”
Despite Musk’s assertion that Grokipedia is an improvement over Wikipedia, critics have pointed out that many of its articles are thinly sourced. For instance, Grokipedia’s entry on the Chola Dynasty of southern India lists just three linked sources, while Wikipedia’s version boasts 113 sources and dozens of referenced books. The Wikimedia Foundation, which operates Wikipedia, was quick to highlight its own strengths in a statement issued after Grokipedia’s launch. Lauren Dickinson, a spokesperson for the Foundation, emphasized that “Wikipedia informs; it does not persuade,” and underscored the site’s “transparent policies, rigorous volunteer oversight, and a strong culture of continuous improvement.”
“This human-created knowledge is what AI companies rely on to generate content; even Grokipedia needs Wikipedia to exist,” Dickinson added, pointing to the reality that Wikipedia has long served as a foundational training source for AI models, including ChatGPT, Google’s Gemini, and, it seems, Grok itself.
Musk, for his part, insists that Grokipedia will be “continuously updated and improved” as Grok’s capabilities grow. “We are embedding the principles of critical thinking and cogency into Grok,” he wrote on X, promising ongoing refinement. He maintains that “we will never be perfect, but we shall nonetheless strive towards that goal.”
As the encyclopedia wars heat up, the launch of Grokipedia has ignited fierce debate about who controls the narrative in the digital age. While some see Musk’s new venture as a necessary corrective to perceived bias in established platforms, others worry that replacing one set of gatekeepers with another—especially one powered by proprietary AI—may only deepen the challenges of trust and accuracy. For now, Grokipedia stands as both a symbol of the culture wars and a test case for the future of knowledge on the internet.
