Save StorySave this storySave StorySave this story<\/p>\n
On Monday, Elon Musk\u2019s xAI startup launched Grokipedia, which the billionaire is pitching as an AI-generated alternative to the crowdsourced encyclopedia Wikipedia. Musk first announced the project in late September on his social media platform X, saying it would be \u201ca massive improvement over Wikipedia,\u201d and \u201ca necessary step towards the xAI goal of understanding the Universe.\u201d<\/p>\n
Musk said last week that he had delayed the launch of Grokipedia because his team needed \u201cto do more work to purge out the propaganda.\u201d When Grokipedia eventually dropped on Monday, WIRED was initially unable to access the website and received an automated message that it was blocked.<\/p>\n
When we finally got access to it, WIRED found that the online encyclopedia contained lengthy entries generated by AI. While many of the pages WIRED saw on launch day appeared fairly similar to Wikipedia in terms of tone and content, a number of notable Grokipedia entries denounced the mainstream media, highlighted conservative viewpoints, and sometimes perpetuated historical inaccuracies.<\/p>\n
The Grokipedia entry about the slavery of African Americans in the US includes a section outlining numerous \u201cideological justifications\u201d made for slavery, including the \u201cShift from Necessary Evil to Positive Good.\u201d The end of the entry focuses on criticisms of The 1619 Project, which it says incorrectly framed \u201cslavery as the central engine of the nation's political, economic, and cultural development.\u201d<\/p>\n
Entries for more recent historical events put conservative perspectives at the center. When WIRED searched for \u201cgay marriage\u201d in Grokipedia, no entry popped up, but one of the on-screen suggestions was for \u201cgay pornography\u201d instead. This entry in Grokipedia falsely states that the proliferation of porn exacerbated the HIV\/AIDS epidemic in the 1980s.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis marked the onset of what would become a devastating crisis disproportionately affecting gay male communities, where behaviors idealized in pornography\u2014such as unprotected receptive anal intercourse and multiple anonymous partners\u2014aligned directly with primary transmission routes, leading to rapid seroconversion rates,\u201d the Grokipedia entry claims.<\/p>\n
xAI did not immediately return a request for comment.<\/p>\n
The Grokipedia entry for \u201ctransgender\u201d includes two mentions of \u201ctransgenderism,\u201d a term commonly used to denigrate trans people. The entry also refers to trans women as \u201cbiological males\u201d who have \u201cgenerated significant conflicts, primarily centered on risks to women's safety, privacy, and sex-based protections established to mitigate male-perpetrated violence.\u201d The opening section highlights social media as a potential "contagion" that is increasing the number of trans people.<\/p>\n
WIRED magazine\u2019s entry in Grokipedia mentions Musk\u2019s own criticism of the publication. \u201cHigh-profile detractors, including Elon Musk in February 2025, have labeled Wired as devolving into \u2018far-left wing propaganda,\u2019 arguing it abandoned technology-focused reporting for ideologically driven narratives that normalize heavy-handed oversight of private enterprise,\u201d the entry says. Grokipedia also claims WIRED is emblematic of the \u201cmainstream media's systemic leftward lean.\u201d<\/p>\n
The entry for US president Donald Trump also includes a swipe at the media for its allegedly \u201cleft-leaning bias\u201d in coverage of the ongoing federal government shutdown. It accuses CNN and The New York Times of \u201camplifying shutdown narratives that attribute blame primarily to Republicans despite bipartisan failures.\u201d (CNN and The New York Times did not immediately respond to requests for comment.)<\/p>\n
The entries on Grokipedia definitely don\u2019t skimp in terms of word count. The Grokipedia entry for \u201cElon Musk\u201d is just short of 11,000 words, has over 300 website references, and includes sections like \u201cCriticisms of Regulation and Woke Culture\u201d as well as \u201cAdvocacy for Multiplanetary Life and Population Growth.\u201d Musk\u2019s Wikipedia entry, in comparison, clocks in at under 8,000 words.<\/p>\n
Grokipedia\u2019s suggested search terms related to Elon Musk include \u201cElon Musk (disambiguation)\u201d and \u201cElon Musk filmography.\u201d In comparison, when searching Grokipedia for OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, the top suggestion on Monday was \u201cRemoval of Sam Altman from OpenAI,\u201d referring to a brief incident in 2023 when Altman was temporarily removed by OpenAI\u2019s board of directors before returning as CEO.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Save StorySave this storySave StorySave this story On Monday, Elon Musk\u2019s xAI startup launched Grokipedia, which the billionaire is pitching as an AI-generated alternative to the crowdsourced encyclopedia Wikipedia. Musk first announced the project in late September on his social media platform X, saying it would be \u201ca massive improvement over Wikipedia,\u201d and \u201ca necessary […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":36725,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[36],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-36724","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-business"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/agooka.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36724","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/agooka.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/agooka.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/agooka.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/agooka.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=36724"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/agooka.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36724\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/agooka.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/36725"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/agooka.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=36724"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/agooka.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=36724"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/agooka.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=36724"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}