Musk’s Grokipedia Launch Raises Bias, Copying Concerns

On Oct. 27–28, 2025, Elon Musk’s xAI launched Grokipedia, an AI‑generated, Grok‑fact‑checked online encyclopedia billed as a more “truthful” and less “woke” alternative to Wikipedia; it went live as a v0.1, briefly crashed under heavy traffic, and debuted with roughly 880,000–900,000 entries. Musk has said the project is open source and promised a 1.0 release that will be “10X better.” Users can flag or request changes but cannot directly edit pages; Grok centralizes authorship, moderation and fact‑checking, and many entries appear to mirror or adapt Wikipedia content (some carry CC BY‑SA notices). Reporters, researchers and major outlets — and Wikipedia itself — have publicly flagged factual errors, omissions, conservative‑leaning framings and instances of copied content, with flagged topics including gender, the Jan. 6 attack and contested claims about AIDS. Observers also noted Musk’s own entry is notably favorable and omits controversies, and the project was reportedly suggested by investor David Sacks as part of Musk’s broader effort to challenge mainstream media and Wikipedia’s sourcing. Supporters call the release an iterative v0.1 beta to be improved; critics — including Wikipedia founders and academic experts — warn that opaque, AI‑only authorship raises serious concerns about neutrality, provenance and reliability.