The Grok AI logo will appear on your phone and the Wikipedia logo will appear in the background.
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Elon Musk launched an early version of an AI-powered encyclopedia called Grokipedia on Monday, but the website briefly crashed but came back online hours later.
The new AI service, named after xAI’s large-scale language model Grok, is being touted by Musk as an improved, less biased version of the popular free web-based Wikipedia.
of tesla SpaceX’s CEO announced last month that the company is working on a Wikipedia rival, following a proposal from fellow tech mogul David Sachs, who is serving as AI and cryptocurrency czar in President Donald Trump’s administration.
Musk, a supporter of Germany’s far-right extremist party AfD, previously slammed Wikipedia, calling it “woke” and criticizing many of its articles citing news outlets such as the New York Times and NPR as sources.
In a post on X, Musk said the release was only “Grokipedia version 0.1,” but that “version 1.0 will be 10 times better.” However, he claimed that the current version is better than Wikipedia.
Reports and copies of the site in the web archive The Way Back Machine indicate that the site has been down for several hours.
The Grokipedia.com page has a dark background with a search bar, says it has 885,279 articles, and appears to have a style reminiscent of Wikipedia.
For comparison, as of Tuesday, there were more than 7 million articles on English Wikipedia, according to the Wikipedia website. While Wikipedia articles are also written and edited by a community of volunteer writers and editors, Grokipedia appears to be generated solely by AI.
Musk’s ‘anti-woke’ AI movement continues
Grokipedia represents the latest application of xAI’s chatbot to Musk’s project after Grok was integrated into the X social media platform.
Musk also touted Grok as an “anti-wake” and fair alternative to competitors such as OpenAI’s ChatGPT.
However, as many media outlets and X users have pointed out, Grok chatbots and Grokipedia itself commonly cite Wikipedia as a source when asked by users.
In a statement shared with CNBC, a Wikimedia Foundation spokesperson said the company is “still in the process of understanding how Glocipedia works,” but added that alternative versions of Wikipedia have appeared before and do not interfere with its work or mission.
When asked about accusations of bias, a spokesperson said Wikipedia is written to inform billions of readers without promoting any particular point of view, adding: “Unlike new projects, Wikipedia’s strengths are clear: we have transparent policies, rigorous volunteer oversight, and a strong culture of continuous improvement.”
“Wikipedia’s knowledge is, and always will be, human. Through open collaboration and consensus, people of all backgrounds build a neutral, living record of human understanding that reflects our diversity and collective curiosity. This human-created knowledge is what AI companies rely on to generate content. Even Grokipedia needs Wikipedia to exist,” he added.
Wikipedia co-founder Jimmy Wales told the Washington Post last week that he didn’t have high hopes for Wikipedia because the AI language model wasn’t sophisticated enough and “there’s going to be a lot of errors.”
Meanwhile, Wikipedia co-founder Larry Sanger, who stepped down as editor-in-chief and editor-in-chief in 2002 and has long been critical of the current editorial leadership, has long expressed enthusiasm about Wikipedia’s newcomers.
But after Grokipedia launched, Sanger posted a long thread on his behalf pointing out the AI encyclopedia’s inaccuracies.
