On October 28, 2025, Elon Musk’s artificial intelligence company xAI officially launched Grokipedia, an ambitious new online encyclopedia designed to compete directly with Wikipedia. Musk’s stated goal? To provide “the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth,” as he declared on his social media platform X, promising that Grokipedia would strive for accuracy and even preserve its knowledge “etched in a stable oxide in orbit, the Moon and Mars to preserve it for the future,” according to TNND and NBC News.
But from the moment Grokipedia went live, controversy swirled. The Verge and Futurism reported that Grokipedia’s content appears to rely heavily—almost word for word—on Wikipedia itself. Pages for topics as varied as Monday, Apple, and the PlayStation 5 are nearly identical to their Wikipedia counterparts. Many Grokipedia articles even acknowledge their source, stating that the “content is adapted from Wikipedia, licensed under Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License.”
This heavy borrowing has not gone unnoticed. Lauren Dickinson, a spokesperson for the Wikimedia Foundation, which oversees Wikipedia, released a statement emphasizing the foundational role Wikipedia plays in the digital knowledge ecosystem. “Unlike newer projects, Wikipedia’s strengths are clear: it has transparent policies, rigorous volunteer oversight, and a strong culture of continuous improvement,” Dickinson said, as reported by Futurism. She went further, noting, “Wikipedia’s knowledge is — and always will be — human. Through open collaboration and consensus, people from all backgrounds build a neutral, living record of human understanding — one that reflects our diversity and collective curiosity.” Dickinson concluded, “This human-created knowledge is what AI companies rely on to generate content. Even Grokipedia needs Wikipedia to exist.”
Yet, Grokipedia is not simply a mirror of Wikipedia. Where the two diverge, the differences are often ideological. The Verge observed that Grokipedia’s entry on climate change, for example, removed most instances of the word “unanimous” when describing the scientific consensus on human-caused global warming. NBC News and Wired noted that Grokipedia omits negative details about certain public figures, such as former president Donald Trump and Musk himself—leaving out, for instance, Trump’s acceptance of a controversial jet from Qatar and Musk’s own widely criticized actions. Wired also flagged Grokipedia entries that contained highly controversial content, such as a section on slavery in the United States justifying the practice on ideological grounds, and another linking gay pornography to the spread of HIV/AIDS.
For Musk, however, Grokipedia’s launch is a direct response to what he perceives as Wikipedia’s “liberal bias.” He has repeatedly accused Wikipedia of being controlled by “far-left activists,” and Grokipedia’s mission is, in his words, to provide an alternative that is more balanced and less beholden to what he sees as mainstream media narratives. According to TNND, Musk claimed Wikipedia’s coverage of himself is unfairly negative, labeling him a “polarizing figure” and focusing on controversies, whereas Grokipedia emphasizes his influence on technological progress and institutional reform.
The clash between Grokipedia and Wikipedia has drawn the attention of Wikipedia’s founder, Jimmy Wales, who addressed the matter at the CNBC Technology Executive Council Summit in New York. Wales was blunt in his skepticism: “I’m not optimistic he will create anything very useful right now,” he said, according to CNBC. He rejected Musk’s allegations of “woke bias,” explaining, “His complaints about Wiki are that we focus on mainstream sources and I am completely unapologetic about that. We don’t treat random crackpots the same as The New England Journal of Medicine and that doesn’t make us woke.” With a touch of irony, Wales added, “It’s a paradox. We are so radical we quote The New York Times.”
Wales’ concerns went beyond Musk’s ideological critiques. He questioned the reliability of large language models (LLMs) like those powering Grokipedia. “The LLMs he is using to write it are going to make massive errors,” Wales warned, referencing well-known issues with AI-generated text, including “plausible but wrong” answers and even fabricated book citations. He recounted an incident where a German Wikipedia community member traced a series of erroneous ISBN numbers back to a user relying on ChatGPT, which “just very happily makes up books for you.”
Despite these shortcomings, Musk remains bullish about Grokipedia’s potential. On October 28, he predicted, “Grokipedia will exceed Wikipedia by several orders of magnitude in breadth, depth and accuracy.” But the reality, at least for now, is that Grokipedia remains much smaller than its rival. TNND reported that Grokipedia currently boasts around 800,000 articles, a far cry from Wikipedia’s more than 7 million entries. And while Wikipedia’s editing process is famously open and community-driven, Grokipedia’s transparency is murky at best. Some articles feature an “edit” button, but clicking it doesn’t allow changes—raising questions about how errors will be corrected or how the site will adapt over time.
The debate over bias and accuracy isn’t new for Wikipedia, which has faced criticism from all sides over its 25-year history. Wales acknowledged that Wikipedia is “not as good as they think we are. Of course, we are a lot better than we used to be, but there is still so much work to do.” He stressed the importance of maintaining neutrality and careful sourcing, especially as AI-generated misinformation becomes more sophisticated. “It’s really important for us and the Wiki community to respond to criticism like that by doubling down on being neutral and being really careful about sources,” Wales said. “We shouldn’t be ‘wokepedia.’ That’s not who we should be or what people want from us. It would undermine trust.”
Wales did concede that AI could play a limited role in Wikipedia’s future, helping surface relevant information from existing sources. But he cautioned against overreliance on LLMs, pointing to the massive costs and persistent risks of error. “Maybe it helps us do our work faster,” he said, but for now, Wikipedia is holding off on any formal AI integration.
As the dust settles from Grokipedia’s rocky debut, the lines are drawn: Musk’s AI-powered encyclopedia promises a new age of knowledge, while Wikipedia’s defenders warn that trust, neutrality, and human oversight can’t be easily replaced by algorithms. Whether Grokipedia will truly become the “truth machine” Musk envisions—or simply another echo of the internet’s existing voices—remains to be seen.
