Elon Musk’s artificial intelligence company, xAI, has launched Grokipedia, a new online encyclopedia aimed at competing with Wikipedia, which the billionaire entrepreneur has repeatedly accused of ideological bias.
The platform, released on Monday and described as version 0.1, went live with more than 885,000 articles—a fraction of Wikipedia’s seven million English-language entries. Despite that, Musk declared the new site “already better than Wikipedia” and promised that an upcoming version 1.0 would be “10 times better.”
“The goal of Grok and Grokipedia.com is the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth,” Musk posted on X (formerly Twitter). “We will never be perfect, but we shall nonetheless strive towards that goal.”
Musk said the launch, initially planned for late September, was delayed to “purge out the propaganda.” The content on Grokipedia is generated by xAI’s artificial intelligence tools, particularly its generative AI assistant Grok.
Musk, who also heads Tesla and SpaceX, has long criticized Wikipedia, claiming in 2024 that it was “controlled by far-left activists” and urging users to stop donating to the non-profit platform. In August, he argued that “Wikipedia cannot be used as a definitive source for Community Notes” due to what he called “extreme left bias” in its editorial process.
A Grokipedia entry about Musk highlights his influence on global debates around technology, demographics, and media bias, while referencing “criticisms from legacy media outlets that exhibit systemic left-leaning tilts in coverage.”
Founded in 2001, Wikipedia remains a volunteer-driven, donation-funded encyclopedia that emphasizes a “neutral point of view.”
Meanwhile, the Wikimedia Foundation (WMF), which operates Wikipedia, recently reported an 8% decline in human pageviews compared to the same period last year. The organisation attributed the drop to growing reliance on generative AI tools and changing information habits, with search engines increasingly providing direct answers based on Wikipedia content.
Marshall Miller, WMF’s Senior Director of Product, said the trend reflects “a fundamental change in how the public discovers information,” noting that AI and search platforms often “use Wikipedia’s knowledge without directing users back to it.”
The decline followed improvements in WMF’s bot detection system, which reclassified inflated traffic earlier identified as automated activity. After adjustments, real human engagement on the platform was found to have dropped by roughly 8% year-on-year.
