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Last month, tech billionaire Elon Musk launched Grokipedia, an AI-powered platform, to rival online encyclopedia Wikipedia.
“Grokipedia volition transcend Wikipedia by respective orders of magnitude successful breadth, extent and accuracy,” Musk posted connected X the time aft his tract went unrecorded connected October 27.
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In the property of generative artificial quality and AI-assisted hunt engines, Wikipedia remains an accusation repository authored by humans.
Grokipedia volition transcend Wikipedia by respective orders of magnitude successful breadth, extent and accuracy https://t.co/Nt4M6vqEZu
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) October 28, 2025
Yet PolitiFact recovered Grokipedia’s articles are often astir wholly lifted from Wikipedia. And erstwhile the entries differ, Grokipedia’s accusation prime and sourcing are problematic and error-prone, making it a little reliable probe tool.
Musk said connected an October 31 occurrence of the “All-In” tech and concern podcast that his squad instructed his company’s chatbot, Grok, to spell done the apical 1 cardinal Wikipedia articles and past “add, modify and delete”.
“So that means probe the remainder of the internet, immoderate is publically available, and close the Wikipedia articles, hole mistakes, but besides adhd a batch much context,” helium said connected the podcast.
Grokipedia articles often incorporate the substance “Fact-checked by Grok“.
PolitiFact reviewed Grokipedia articles and recovered that erstwhile they see connection that’s antithetic from what appeared connected Wikipedia, the caller content:
- Is not supported by citations;
- Does not supply references; or
- Introduces misleading oregon opinionated claims.
Grokipedia often besides removes discourse from its articles.
A illustration of Grokipedia’s 885,279 articles reveals they are taxable to a akin AI-related improvement we archetypal saw successful May, anterior to the tool’s unveiling. Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F Kennedy Jr past released a Make America Healthy Again study that contained respective erroneous citations, including crediting sources that did not exist.
Joseph Reagle, Northeastern University subordinate prof of connection studies, said Grokipedia misunderstands Wikipedia’s and AI’s strengths.
“Wikipedia’s merits are that it is the effect of a assemblage of thousands of radical diligently moving to make high-quality content,” Reagle said, portion AI is utile erstwhile it’s interactive and accepts pushback.
Hundreds of thousands of volunteers worldwide lend contented to Wikipedia, guided by the platform’s editorial policies and guidelines.
The Wikimedia Foundation, the nonprofit that operates Wikipedia, is alert of Grokipedia’s copying problem.
“Even Grokipedia needs Wikipedia to exist,” said Selena Decklemann, main merchandise and exertion serviceman astatine the Wikimedia Foundation, successful a connection to PolitiFact. “Wikipedia’s contented is unfastened root by design; we expect it volition beryllium utilized successful bully religion to educate. This contented is particularly urgent arsenic platforms similar Grokipedia progressively gully connected our articles, selectively extracting contented – written by thousands of volunteers – and filtering it done opaque and unaccountable algorithms.”
Entries are astir identical, but for incorrect oregon missing references
We looked astatine Grokipedia articles covering assorted topics including science, euphony and economics. In galore articles we reviewed, Grokipedia links to Wikipedia articles with this statement: “The contented is adapted from Wikipedia, licensed nether Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License.”
That means Wikipedia’s licensing allows Grokipedia to copy, redistribute and adapt the contented with an attribution. It besides requires Grokipedia to springiness the aforesaid permissions for its adapted content. (There are immoderate articles that don’t transcript from Wikipedia and don’t diagnostic this statement, specified arsenic the nonfiction for Joseph Stalin.)
Grokipedia’s nonfiction operation is akin to Wikipedia’s, which features notation lists astatine the bottom. But successful immoderate instances, Grokipedia copies Wikipedia articles portion omitting their citations and notation lists.
Grokipedia’s nonfiction for “Monday,” for example, includes accusation astir the time of the week’s etymology, related spiritual observances and taste references. But it contains nary citations different than to accidental it was adapted from Wikipedia.
The Grokipedia nonfiction was a 96 percent lucifer of Wikipedia’s “Monday” article, according to Copyscape, a plagiarism checker. The Wikipedia article, however, listed 22 references.
Sometimes Grokipedia botches citations. In the introduction for “culminating point,” Grokipedia cited the incorrect publication section successful which subject theorist Carl von Clausewitz introduced the concept. The remainder of the nonfiction substance is copied from Wikipedia.
One nonfiction that differs importantly from its Wikipedia counterpart is the introduction for “Hello”, a opus by British vocalist Adele. Multiple items successful the Grokipedia notation database are Instagram reels that supply secondhand, unattributed accusation and commentary. Wikipedia’s standards accidental specified user-generated contented is “generally unacceptable arsenic sources”.
In the introduction for the Canadian vocalist Feist, Grokipedia copied from Wikipedia but added a enactment saying her begetter died successful May 2021. The citation led to Vice’s 2017 ranking of the 60 champion Canadian indie stone songs, an nonfiction that doesn’t notation the decease of Feist’s father, who was inactive live that year.
Grokipedia lacks transparency connected correcting errors
PolitiFact recovered astatine slightest 1 lawsuit erstwhile Grokipedia introduced misleading information.
The Grokipedia and Wikipedia articles for “Nobel Prize successful Physics” are mostly the same, but 1 condemnation Grokipedia added said, “Physics is traditionally the archetypal grant presented successful the Nobel Prize ceremony.” It did not supply a citation, and it appears to beryllium wrong: In astatine slightest the past fewer years, the Nobel Prize for Physiology oregon Medicine was awarded first.
“Unlike Grokipedia, which relies connected accelerated AI-generated contented with constricted transparency and oversight, Wikipedia’s processes are unfastened to nationalist reappraisal and rigorously papers the sources down each article,” Decklemann said.
Wikipedia allows anyone to lend and edit articles, and ensures transparency by making the past of an nonfiction viewable. Some volunteers person precocious permissions and are equipped to code antagonistic behaviour connected the platform.
However, Wikipedia has travel nether scrutiny aft an exertion blocked changes to an nonfiction connected the Gaza genocide page.
On Grokipedia, registered users tin suggest edits to published articles. But Grokipedia has nary diagnostic allowing readers to presumption what edits person been made. It is unclear what happens erstwhile determination are errors – whether a quality oregon Grok corrects them, however those changes are deliberated, and however agelong it takes to update pages.
PolitiFact Researcher Caryn Baird contributed to this report.
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