Elon Musk has introduced Grokipedia, an AI-driven alternative to Wikipedia, aiming to address perceived biases in online information.
Elon Musk has officially launched “Grokipedia,” an AI-based alternative to Wikipedia. The billionaire entrepreneur announced last month that his team at xAI was developing a platform that would represent a “massive improvement over Wikipedia.” He emphasized that this initiative is a crucial step toward achieving xAI’s overarching goal of understanding the universe.
Grokipedia went live on Monday, but users reported experiencing errors on the site, according to The Washington Post. The website features a search bar set against a dark background, with a font style reminiscent of both Wikipedia and ChatGPT. The landing page indicates that Grokipedia is currently in “version v0.1” and has logged approximately 885,279 articles.
Musk, who was once a supporter of Wikipedia, has voiced concerns about the platform’s alleged “liberal bias.” In a December 2019 post on X, formerly known as Twitter, he criticized his own Wikipedia page, describing it as a “war zone with a zillion edits.” He expressed frustration over the inaccuracies, stating, “Just looked at my wiki for 1st time in years. It’s insane!” Musk also requested the removal of the label “investor,” asserting that he engages in minimal investing. In December 2022, he reiterated his belief that Wikipedia exhibits “a non-trivial left-wing bias.”
Additionally, Musk has had a long-standing online feud with Wikipedia co-founder Jimmy Wales. In May 2023, Wales criticized Musk for restricting certain content on Twitter in Turkey prior to the country’s presidential election. Following Musk’s acquisition of Twitter and its rebranding to X in November 2023, Wales remarked that the platform had become overrun with “trolls and lunatics.”
In a recent interview with The Washington Post, Wales expressed skepticism about Grokipedia, stating that he did not have high expectations for the platform. He noted that AI language models are not yet sophisticated enough and predicted that “there will be a lot of errors.”
Articles on Grokipedia are generated by Musk’s Grok AI, and the site mirrors Wikipedia in terms of style, page structure, and reference format. While Grokipedia boasts over 800,000 articles, Wikipedia has surpassed the one million mark. It remains unclear how much human oversight is involved in the creation of Grokipedia’s content, although users are encouraged to provide feedback if they identify inaccuracies.
Musk articulated his vision for Grok and Grokipedia on X, stating that their mission is to pursue “the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth.” He acknowledged that while perfection may be unattainable, the team will strive toward that goal. Musk also mentioned a plan to send copies of Grokipedia “etched in a stable oxide in orbit, the Moon and Mars to preserve it for the future.”
However, early users have already detected inaccuracies within Grokipedia’s articles. For instance, the entry on Musk incorrectly stated that former presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy assumed a prominent role in DOGE after Musk’s departure, despite Ramaswamy leaving the group in January, months before Musk stepped down in May.
Furthermore, a report by Wired indicated that several Grokipedia entries emphasized conservative viewpoints and contained historical inaccuracies, raising concerns about the reliability of the platform.
As Grokipedia continues to evolve, it remains to be seen how it will address these challenges and whether it can fulfill Musk’s ambitious vision for an unbiased repository of knowledge.
Source: Original article