 "Grokipedia launched: Can Elon Musk’s AI-powered encyclopaedia compete with Wikipedia?")
Elon Musk is the founder of Tesla, SpaceX and now, he can add another feather to his cap — Grokipedia. On Monday, the billionaire tech entrepreneur launched an online encyclopaedia written by AI, positioning it as a rival to Wikipedia, the world’s most widely used reference website.
The new website launch comes after Musk first announced the project in late September on his social media platform X, saying it would be “a massive improvement over Wikipedia,” and “a necessary step towards the xAI goal of understanding the Universe.”
But what exactly is Grokipedia? How does it compare to Wikipedia?
What we know of Grokipedia
Built to rival Wikipedia — everyone’s go-to destination for information — Grokipedia went live on Monday. The site resembles Wikipedia in style and format, with articles on topics such as ChatGPT, Diane Keaton and the 2026 FIFA World Cup.
It is currently billed as v0.1 and says on the homepage that it has 885,279 articles. However, Musk has hinted that the AI engine will continuously expand and said on X that it is the only 0.1 version of Grokipedia.
https://t.co/op5s4ZiSwh version 0.1 is now live.
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) October 28, 2025
Version 1.0 will be 10X better, but even at 0.1 it’s better than Wikipedia imo.
When Grokipedia first went live on Monday, it crashed for a few hours. However, the site is now live.
Notably, Grokipedia’s entry on Elon Musk himself is quite different from Wikipedia’s page about him. The Washington Post noted that Grokipedia described some of Musk’s pursuits in breathless terms, saying his pushes for artificial intelligence “emphasise AI safety through truth-oriented development rather than heavy regulation” and that certain releases “reflect xAI’s rapid iteration, with Musk highlighting Grok’s design for maximal truth-seeking and reduced censorship.”
On the topic of Musk’s work at the Doge department, it features an error stating that Vivek Ramaswamy he took on “a more prominent role” after Musk’s departure in May. In reality, Ramaswamy left the group before it became part of the Trump administration in January.
On other topics too, there are some differences, with experts pointing out that Grokipedia definitely exhibits a right-wing lean. For instance, a Grokipedia page on the US Capitol riots on January 6, 2021, it states that the Democrats and the mainstream media have exaggerated both its severity and President Donald Trump’s culpability.
Another instance in the difference between Wikipedia and Grokipedia entries can be seen on the topic of gender. Grokipedia’s entry on gender begins with, “Gender refers to the binary classification of humans as male or female based on biological sex”, whereas Wikipedia’s entry reads: “Gender is the range of social, psychological, cultural, and behavioural aspects of being a man (or boy), woman (or girl), or third gender.”
Difference between Wikipedia and Grokipedia
The difference in the entries in Wikipedia and Grokipedia is because of the way each has been built. Wikipedia, which debuted almost 25 years ago, is based on crowdsourced information. What this means is that the content featured on the website is written and maintained by a group of volunteers, who operate under clear editorial policies and open discussion forums.
Grokipedia, on the other hand, uses artificial intelligence (AI) to generate and edit most of its content, with limited visible human intervention. In fact, most of the information on Grokipedia appears to be derived from the same large language model that underlies the Grok chatbot on X. Simply put, this means that Grokipedia could have access to posts on X and use that information to create articles and keep them up-to-date.
However, there’s one main issue with this model; it could make the online encyclopaedia prone to the same high-profile blunders that have caused a controversy with Grok. For instance, earlier, the chatbot provided a conspiracy theory on white genocide in South Africa in response to unrelated questions.
Moreover, as of now, Wikipedia has more entries than Grokipedia — six million in English compared to over 800,000 at launch. Wikipedia also lets users edit pages. But many who reviewed Grok early on noted that the same feature wasn’t available on Grokipedia.
Many early users of Grokipedia also found that it was sourcing its information from none other Wikipedia itself. A report by The Verge said that “the content is adapted from Wikipedia, licensed under Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license”. Additionally, some pages such as PlayStation 5 and the Lincoln Mark VIII feature the same information as on the Wikipedia site.
To this, Lauren Dickinson, a spokesperson for the Wikimedia Foundation, the non-profit that operates Wikipedia, told The Verge, “Even Grokipedia needs Wikipedia to exist.”
Why Musk launched Grokipedia
With Grokipedia, Elon Musk is expanding his digital empire. But that’s not the only reasoning behind launching the site.
After being an ardent fan of Wikipedia, Musk turned on the online encyclopaedia earlier this year. He has criticised it for being too woke — in January, he slammed the entry on him that was edited to note that he had made what was suggested to be a Nazi salute during a speech at Trump’s inauguration. Musk has denied any meaning behind his gesture, something also included in the entry.
“Since legacy media propaganda is considered a ‘valid’ source by Wikipedia, it naturally simply becomes an extension of legacy media propaganda!” he posted, calling for its donors to stop contributing to the site.
Wikipedia reacts
Wikipedia co-founder Jimmy Wales told the _Washington Pos_t in an interview last week that he didn’t have high expectations for Grokipedia because AI language models aren’t sophisticated enough and “there will be a lot of errors”.
Lauren Dickinson, a spokesperson for the Wikimedia Foundation, the non-profit that operates Wikipedia, also put up a statement that read: “We’re still in the process of understanding how Grokipedia works.
“Since 2001, Wikipedia has been the backbone of knowledge on the internet. Hosted by the Wikimedia Foundation, it remains the only top website in the world run by a non-profit. Unlike newer projects, Wikipedia’s strengths are clear: it has transparent policies, rigorous volunteer oversight, and a strong culture of continuous improvement. Wikipedia is an encyclopaedia, written to inform billions of readers without promoting a particular point of view.
“Many experiments to create alternative versions of Wikipedia have happened before; it doesn’t interfere with our work or mission. As we approach Wikipedia’s 25th anniversary, Wikipedia will continue focusing on providing free, trustworthy knowledge built by its dedicated volunteer community.”
With inputs from agencies
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