(AFP) – Elon Musk’s company xAI has launched a website called Grokipedia to compete with the online encyclopedia Wikipedia, which he and others on the American right wing have accused of ideological bias. The site, dubbed version 0.1, had more than 885,000 articles by Monday evening after its launch, compared to Wikipedia’s more than seven million in English. The launch came with the promise of a newer version, 1.0, which Musk said would be “10X better” than the current live site, which he claimed is already “better than Wikipedia.”
Musk and the US Republican Party have frequently criticized Wikipedia, accusing a site that has become a living repository of human knowledge of being biased against right-wing ideas. Musk, the world’s richest person and owner of social media platform X, poured hundreds of millions into US President Donald Trump’s election campaign and claimed Grokipedia would carry “the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth.” “We will never be perfect, but we shall nonetheless strive towards that goal,” he said on X following the launch.
The content of Grokipedia is generated by artificial intelligence (AI) and the generative AI assistant Grok. Grokipedia’s release had been slated for the end of September but was delayed to “purge out the propaganda,” Musk said in a separate X post.
– Attacks on Wikipedia –
In 2024, Musk accused Wikipedia of being “controlled by far-left activists” and called for donations to the platform to cease. In August, he stopped Twitter from using Wikipedia as a “definitive source for Community Notes,” stating that the editorial control there is extremely left-biased. Trump-aligned officials have also taken aim at the site since the Republican returned to power in January.
In April, federal prosecutor Ed Martin, who was appointed by Trump but has since been replaced, threatened to investigate whether Wikipedia’s parent organization, Wikimedia, was eligible for the tax exemption granted to foundations, accusing it of carrying propaganda. In August, two Republican members of the House of Representatives launched an investigation into “organized efforts… to influence US public opinion on important and sensitive topics by manipulating Wikipedia articles.”
Created in 2001, Wikipedia is a collaborative encyclopedia managed by volunteers, largely funded by donations. Its pages can be written or edited by internet users. “Unlike newer projects, Wikipedia’s strengths are clear: it has transparent policies, rigorous volunteer oversight, and a strong culture of continuous improvement,” Gwadamirai Majange, a spokeswoman for the Wikimedia Foundation, told AFP in an email. She said the site is written to inform “billions of readers without promoting a particular point of view.”
– Right-leaning content –
A Grokipedia article about Musk states that the Tesla and SpaceX CEO “has influenced broader debates on technological progress, demographic decline, and institutional biases, often via X.” It said his ownership of the social media platform “has prioritized content moderation reforms amid criticisms from legacy media outlets that exhibit systemic left-leaning tilts in coverage.”
Another example was the page devoted to right-wing journalist and commentator Tucker Carlson, which highlights his role in “challenging systemic biases in traditional journalism.” The citation to that claim, however, links to a Newsweek article where the only corroboration is Carlson describing himself that way. Several right-wing figures welcomed the launch of Grokipedia. Hardline Russian ideologue Alexander Dugin described the article about him as “neutral, objective, accurate,” whereas Wikipedia’s page, according to him, was “totally biased and defamatory.”
Asked about the launch of Grokipedia, Wikimedia spokesperson Majange said the organization was “still in the process of understanding how Grokipedia works.” She highlighted that Wikimedia “is — and always will be — human.” “This human-created knowledge is what AI companies rely on to generate content; even Grokipedia needs Wikipedia to exist.”
© 2024 AFP
