Its launch was delayed a week by Elon Musk, who explained that he needed to “work harder to purge the propaganda.” On Monday, October 27, Grokipedia, the encyclopedia generated by Grok’s artificial intelligence, went online.
The billionaire’s objectives are clear: to compete with Wikipedia, the online participatory encyclopedia, accused by the billionaire and several members of the American right of harboring too many liberal opinions.
“I’m not optimistic.”
But nothing to worry about the most famous of encyclopedias. As proof, the first version 0.1 of Grokipedia has about 885,000 definitions, compared to the more than seven million in English of its competitor. Worse still, the site crashed just hours after its launch.
In fact, Grokipedia didn’t “create” much as some of its definitions were simply copied and pasted from Wikipedia. As discovered by The Verge, this is the case with the Macbook Air, the PlayStation 5, and the Lincoln Mark VIII.
Another barrier is that “the LLMs you use to write the text will make big mistakes,” he continues. “We know that ChatGPT and all the other LLMs are not good enough to write wiki articles.” In fact, if Wikipedia uses volunteers, its competitors’ pages are generated by AI. However, these tools tend to deceive or produce false or misleading answers presented as fact.
Subjective results
The businessman didn’t even take the time to look at Elon Musk’s encyclopedia. “I haven’t had time to really look at Grokipedia, and it will be interesting to see, but apparently there’s a lot of praise for Elon Musk’s genius. So I’m sure it’s totally neutral,” he jokes.
Because if the richest man in the world stated that the objective of “Grok and Grokipedia was the whole truth, nothing but the truth”, it is above all a truth according to Elon Musk. The content of certain articles shows great subjectivity. Several pages thus seem aligned with the positions of its founder. And there is no shortage of examples.
Just take a look at Elon Musk’s page. The billionaire is described as an “innovative visionary” and an “irreverent provocateur.” The first paragraphs ensure that the Tesla boss has “influenced the debate” on several topics, which has earned him “criticism from traditional media that demonstrate leftist tendencies in their coverage.” The article omits the episode of his controversial greeting during the presidential inauguration.
Cybertruck, JK Rowling and the climate crisis
The same observation occurs with the Cybertruck, Tesla’s pick-up. As Futurism points out, the page looks more like an advertisement than an encyclopedia article. “The exoskeleton (…) offers corrosion resistance comparable to 316L marine steel and is supposed to be seven times stronger and more scratch-resistant than conventional automotive exterior steels,” the page states, for example.
Another section accuses the “left-wing media” of unfairly emphasizing that the truck’s exterior stainless steel rusted quickly after delivery. The article also discusses accusations of “systemic media bias” against Tesla, describing its critics as “linked to left-wing institutional tendencies skeptical of Elon Musk’s maverick approach.”
This “wave of hate against Cybertrucks,” the article laments, comes “despite empirical delivery data showing sustained demand after the problems.” However, a few lines above, the article contradicts itself by admitting that sales fell due to “a drop in demand.” As a reminder, the Cybertruck is a commercial failure. Tesla only sold 5,385 Cybertrucks in the third quarter of 2025. A drop of 63% compared to the same period last year.
In general, figures close to the American right benefit from especially favorable treatment. Donald Trump’s page downplays his court cases and presents Stormy Daniels’ case in a more favorable light. For her part, JK Rowling is described as a “defender of the immutable nature of biological sex” rather than criticized for her transphobic positions.
“Ten times better” than Wikipedia?
Another sensitive topic: global warming. If the encyclopedia recognizes the human origin of global warming, it assures that “consensus surveys highlight a possible overestimation” of this phenomenon. A more or less subtle way to put the magnitude of the crisis into perspective.
Regarding the “Black Lives Matter” civil rights movement, Grokipedia writes that “these protests sparked riots, (…) the most expensive in the history of property damage insurance.” Forgetting to mention, as Wikipedia does, that “the vast majority of the 2020 protests took place peacefully.”
In a message published in Let’s hope it is not ten times more riddled with prejudice and false information.
Source: BFM TV
