Wikipedia is on the defensive after Elon Musk accused the go-to online reference site of political bias and launched a competing version, called Grokipedia.
The Tesla owner's new site, named after Grok, his artificial intelligence bot that responds to queries on X, claims more than 885,000 articles. It is a fraction of Wikipedia's total of about seven million, but a large number for a website that was launched on October 27.
In late September, US President Donald Trump's AI and crypto adviser David Sacks accused Wikipedia of political bias. A day later, Mr Musk announced he was building Grokipedia. He promised it would “be a massive improvement over Wikipedia”, which he has referred to as “wokepedia”.
In highlighting what he described as left-wing biases on Wikipedia, Mr Musk shared a social media post comparing how Grokipedia and Wikipedia described murdered right-wing political activist Charlie Kirk. Mr Musk took issue with the fact that the Wikipedia entry described Mr Kirk as a “far-right” activist and conspiracy theorist.
Since its founding in 2001, Wikipedia has grown into one of the internet's most recognisable brands. It is known for being able to be edited by just about anyone and has “thousands of volunteers around the world”.
“Volunteers will discuss, debate and often disagree until a shared consensus can be reached on what content to include on Wikipedia,” a post on Wikipedia's non-profit Wikimedia Foundation page reads.
Wikipedia co-founder Larry Sanger has warned that Grokipedia could threaten Wikipedia’s relevance unless the company that he left in 2002 undergoes reform. Mr Sanger left Wikipedia shortly after its launch. Critics of his recent comments point out that he made them on a highly partisan podcast hosted by right-wing commentator Tucker Carlson.
In a recent interview with The Guardian, Wikipedia's other co-founder, Jimmy Wales, called Mr Musk's bias claims false and defended Wikipedia's overall style and process.
“What we’re looking for is kind and thoughtful people who care more about getting it right and being calm and factual,” he said.
Despite the launch of Grokipedia, Wikipedia's success in making information freely available is largely unrivalled.
“Since 2001, Wikipedia has been the backbone of knowledge on the internet,” a Wikimedia Foundation representative told The National. “Wikipedia's strengths are clear. It has transparent policies, rigorous volunteer oversight and a strong culture of continuous improvement.”
Although Mr Musk supporters have embraced Grokipedia, critics say there are reasons to be sceptical. The Grok AI that apparently helps power the site has drawn controversy. In July, it answered user prompts with comments deemed so offensive that a court in Turkey temporarily blocked access.
It also provided anti-Semitic answers to some prompts and praised Adolf Hitler. Mr Musk blamed a technical glitch for the problems, but the entrepreneur's far-right political leanings led many to be question his explanations.
After Mr Trump won the presidential election last year, the xAI and Tesla chief gave an apparent Nazi salute to supporters during an inauguration day event. Following his purchase of Twitter in late 2022, he also fired many of the workers responsible for moderating content and flagging hate-speech.
A recent study conducted by researchers at the Berkeley, Los Angeles and Southern California branches of the University of California found that hate speech and spam bots using hate speech have increased since Mr Musk bought Twitter.
Unlike Wikipedia, which routinely documents who edits articles and provides edit history, Grokipedia provides no such insights.
It is also not clear how Grokipedia's articles came into existence, though many speculate xAI's Grok chatbot is used in part. It is also possible that Grokipedia uses content from Wikipedia.
“We're still in the process of understanding how Grokipedia works,” a Wikimedia representative said. “This human-created knowledge is what AI companies rely on to generate content – even Grokipedia needs Wikipedia to exist.”
Wikipedia's influence and search engine-optimised success has yet to be dented by various challengers, including by some of the biggest names in Silicon Valley.
“Even Google, which noticed how often Wikipedia showed up in its search results, tried at one point to launch a competitor,” wrote Mathew Ingram, a blogger, reporter and former digital writer for the Columbia Journalism Review.
“It was supposed to aggregate crowdsourced knowledge from experts and regular Google users, but it was barely even alive in the world before it suddenly vanished without a trace,” he added, referring to Knol, Alphabet-owned Google's attempt to challenge Wikipedia.
Mr Ingram described Wikipedia as one of the best creations to emerge from the internet, adding that he believes it is “a shining example of everything the internet was supposed to do”.
It remains to be seen if Grokipedia will go on to engender similar feelings – but Mr Musk is not showing sign of backing down from his latest endeavour.
