Elon Musk recently announced that his artificial intelligence (AI) company, xAI, is working on a digital reference resource named “Grokipedia” to rival Wikipedia, which he has criticized for alleged ‘political bias.’ Musk shared the development on X, stating, “We are creating Grokipedia @xAI. It will be a significant upgrade from Wikipedia and a crucial step towards xAI’s ambition of comprehending the Universe.”
His remarks were prompted by entrepreneur David Sacks’ assertion that “Wikipedia is inherently biased.” Musk has frequently taken aim at Wikipedia, branding it as “woke” and suggesting it should lose funding due to its donation-based model. Earlier this year, he also criticized the platform for featuring an article claiming he made a Nazi-like gesture at a Trump inauguration event.
The Grokipedia project will utilize xAI’s chatbot Grok, introduced by Musk to compete with OpenAI’s ChatGPT, and trained on various web sources, including public content from X. Musk hinted on a recent podcast that the technology could eventually replicate the tasks of human Wikipedia editors, addressing perceived biases and inaccuracies.
In a 2023 tweet, Musk offered to donate $1 billion to Wikipedia if it rebranded itself as “Dickipedia.”