Elon Musk’s AI-powered Grokipedia promises a new era of online knowledge, but so far it seems to be mining most of its content from Wikipedia

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Tesla CEO Elon Musk launched Grokipedia this week

Elon Musk’s new Wikipedia website rival is already off to a rocky start.

The tech billionaire’s new encyclopedic website, Grokipedia, claims to be a conservative alternative, but it seems to be relying heavily on its rival for content.

Professional Engineering YouTuber Dave Jones posted on X, “Grokipedia rips off directly from Wikipedia, word for word, formatting, structure, the whole thing,” accompanied by examples of the similarities on each website’s page on the Miller Effect.

Both web pages appear very similar, and Grokipedia appears to have ripped the entire Miller Effect page from Wikipedia, bar the pictures.

Importantly, the references also seem hidden.

Jones wrote, “Interestingly, this Grokipedia page on the Miller Effect I posted doesn’t have ANY references, but other pages like this Transitor page does have references.”

Later, he added, “It does seem to have reference capability. On pages with changes from Wikipedia (like Transistor), there is a “See Edits” button.”

Grokipedia is powered by AI, while Wikipedia is powered entirely by its users, who can freely add and edit information on all of its pages.

While Grokipedia claims its entries are “fact-checked” by the AI chatbot Grok, it also says that users can propose changes through a pop-up form to report incorrect information. However, they cannot make direct edits.

Elon Musk wrote a series of posts promoting Grokipedia, claiming that “the goal of Grok and Grokipedia is the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth.

We will never be perfect, but we shall nonetheless strive toward that goal.”

Many of Grokipedia’s pages freely admit that they are based on Wikipedia, but Musk has expressed his desire for Grok to stop pulling information from Wikipedia pages by year’s end.

 

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Wikipedia has an average of 128 million daily visits

The Tesla mastermind openly stated that the website was designed to be less “woke” and has previously said that his AI-generated encyclopedia would be “super important for civilization” and a crucial step toward “understanding the Universe.”

Musk plans to overtake Wikipedia entirely with his new venture, saying on Tuesday, “Grokipedia will exceed Wikipedia by several orders of magnitude in breadth, depth, and accuracy.”

Wikipedia, launched in 2001, responded by noting how Grokipedia needs human content to exist, saying, “This human-created knowledge is what AI companies rely on to generate content; even Grokipedia needs Wikipedia to exist.”