Elon Musk’s AI-powered Wikipedia competitor goes live after a rocky launch

Elon Musk launched an aboriginal mentation of an AI-powered encyclopedia called 'Grokipedia' connected Monday, with its website temporarily crashing earlier coming backmost online hours later. 

The caller AI service, named aft xAI's ample connection exemplary Grok, has been promoted by Musk arsenic an improved and little biased mentation of the fashionable escaped and web-based Wikipedia. 

The Tesla and SpaceX CEO announced past period that helium was moving connected a Wikipedia rival aft a proposition from David Sacks, a chap tech mogul who is serving arsenic U.S. President Donald Trump administration's AI and crypto czar.

Musk, who has endorsed Germany's far-right extremist party AfD, has antecedently lambasted Wikipedia arsenic "woke" and criticized it for citing quality outlets specified arsenic The New York Times and NPR arsenic sources successful galore of its articles.

In a post connected X, Musk said that the motorboat was lone "Grokipedia mentation 0.1," but that a aboriginal "version 1.0 volition beryllium 10X better." However, helium argued the existent mentation was amended than Wikipedia. 

Reports and copies of the tract connected the web archive, The Way Back Machine, bespeak the tract was down for a fewer hours. 

The Grokipedia.com leafage features a hunt barroom connected a acheronian inheritance and says it has logged 885,279 articles, which look to beryllium successful a benignant reminiscent of Wikipedia.

For comparison, the Wikipedia website said it had implicit 7 cardinal articles connected its English Wikipedia arsenic of Tuesday. Wikipedia's articles are besides written and edited by a assemblage of unpaid writers and editors, portion Grokipedia appears to beryllium solely generated by AI. 

Grokipedia represents the latest exertion of xAI's chatbots into Musk's projects aft Grok was integrated into the X societal media platform. 

Musk has besides advertised Grok arsenic an "anti-woke" and unbiased alternate to competitors similar OpenAI's ChatGPT. 

However, arsenic noted by galore media outlets and X users, some the Grok chatbot and Grokipedia itself commonly mention Wikipedia arsenic a root erstwhile queried by users. 

In a connection shared with CNBC, a Wikimedia Foundation spokesperson said the institution was "still successful the process of knowing however Grokipedia works," but added that alternate versions of Wikipedia person appeared earlier and haven't interfered with its enactment oregon mission.

When asked astir accusations of bias, the spokesperson said that Wikipedia is written to pass billions of readers without promoting a peculiar constituent of view, adding that "unlike newer projects, Wikipedia's strengths are clear: it has transparent policies, rigorous unpaid oversight, and a beardown civilization of continuous improvement."

"Wikipedia's cognition is — and ever volition beryllium — human. Through unfastened collaboration and consensus, radical from each backgrounds physique a neutral, surviving grounds of quality knowing — 1 that reflects our diverseness and corporate curiosity. This human-created cognition is what AI companies trust connected to make content; adjacent Grokipedia needs Wikipedia to exist," it added.

Wikipedia co-founder Jimmy Wales reportedly told the Washington Post past week that helium didn't person precocious expectations for Grokipedia arsenic AI connection models weren't blase capable and "there volition beryllium a batch of errors."

On the different hand, Larry Sanger — a Wikipedia co-founder that resigned arsenic exertion and main successful 2002 and has agelong criticized its existent editorial leaderships — has antecedently shown enthusiasm astir a caller to Wikipedia. 

However, pursuing the motorboat of Grokipedia- Sanger posted a agelong thread pointing retired what helium called inaccuracies connected the AI encyclopedia for himself.