What Wikipedia And Grokipedia Are Saying About Each Other - Beritaja

A screengrab from Grokipedia shows its article about Wikipedia, the online encyclopedia that Grokipedia is challenging. Grokipedia/ Screenshot by BERITAJA

Grokipedia/ Screenshot by BERITAJA

Elon Musk's Grokipedia encyclopedia is now online, challenging volunteer-edited Wikipedia pinch a caller instrumentality that incorporates Grok, the ample connection exemplary chatbot developed by Musk's artificial intelligence company, xAI.

Musk is positioning Grokipedia arsenic an replacement to Wikipedia, which he called "Wokepedia" successful an X station last December. Musk has lofty ambitions for the caller encyclopedia: His stated goal is to create "an unfastened source, broad postulation of each knowledge."

Critics and pundits are engaged comparing the 2 sites and really they coming a scope of arguable topics. But we could besides study about immoderate of their differences by asking a elemental question: What do Wikipedia and Grokipedia opportunity about each other?

Searching for each other

A search for "Wikipedia" connected Grokipedia yielded 6,047 results early Wednesday, a number that reflects some the activity that's gone into Grokipedia and the situation of competing pinch an encyclopedia that's been increasing for about 25 years.

On Wikipedia, a search for "Grokipedia" returned 13 results.

Meanwhile, 2 days aft its Monday launch, a hunt for "Grokipedia" connected Grokipedia did not return a dedicated entry. Instead, the 8 hunt results ranged from a wide introduction about online encyclopedias to 7 entries chiefly about Wikipedia.

Typing "grokipedia" into Grokipedia's URL to spot if the caller encyclopedia mightiness person an introduction that's not yet searchable returns a message: "This page doesn't beryllium ... yet."

Bias and imitation

On its page about Wikipedia, Grokipedia says the tract is renowned for its "unprecedented scale, accessibility, and domiciled successful democratizing information." But Grokipedia besides says Wikipedia is the taxable of "persistent criticisms regarding actual reliability, susceptibility to vandalism and hoaxes, and systemic ideological biases — peculiarly a left-leaning slant successful sum of governmental figures and topics."

The lengthy article uses forms of the connection "bias" dozens of times. It alleges that Wikipedia suffers from "ideological skew" to the left, and states that the site's preference for a neutral constituent of view drawn from reliable sources could alternatively reenforce narratives that "align pinch organization biases successful academia and media."

On its page about Grokipedia, Wikipedia says that Musk "positioned Grokipedia arsenic an replacement to Wikipedia that would 'purge retired the propaganda.'" It besides notes that Wikipedia co-founder Larry Sanger, who has go a professional of the long-running encyclopedia, welcomed Grokipedia's arrival.

The Wikipedia article about Grokipedia highlights criticisms of the caller site, specified arsenic media reports that Grokipedia's article about Elon Musk omits mention of the contention complete a motion he made earlier this twelvemonth "which galore viewed arsenic resembling a Nazi salute." It besides says critics allege Grokipedia promotes right-leaning views and relies excessively overmuch connected AI tools.

Wikipedia besides notes that Grokipedia seems to person pulled matter from Wikipedia, stating, "Some articles are about identical to their Wikipedia entries."

In immoderate cases, Grokipedia duplicates Wikipedia content, arsenic noted by media outlets and Wikipedia users. Grokipedia's page connected "buttocks," for instance, is virtually a transcript of the Wikipedia page (albeit without images).

In that and akin cases, the articles admit that their "content was adapted from Wikipedia."

Musk said astatine the All-In Podcast conference successful September that Grok was moving to measure accusation from sources specified arsenic Wikipedia pages and past "rewrite the page to … region the falsehoods, correct the half-truths and adhd the missing context."

Like Wikipedia, Grokipedia users could spot an article's edit history. But while Wikipedia users could straight edit a story, Grokipedia offers devices to inquire questions and taxable a correction.

"Wikipedia's knowledge is — and ever will beryllium — human," the Wikimedia Foundation said successful a connection to BERITAJA. Noting the site's ethos of unfastened collaboration and consensus, it added, "This human-created knowledge is what AI companies trust connected to make content; moreover Grokipedia needs Wikipedia to exist."

Nuts and bolts

Numbers norm the internet, and these 2 sites are reasonably meticulous about their rival's size, pinch immoderate caveats.

Wikipedia, for instance, says that Grokipedia had "about 900,000 AI-generated articles" arsenic of Oct. 28. That aforesaid day, Grokipedia's tract said it had 885,279 articles disposable -- a fig published connected its landing page. The Wikipedia introduction for Grokipedia didn't reference that precise number, and it cited an article from the Indian financial news tract Moneycontrol alternatively of Grokipedia's information -- possibly to seizure a humanities grounds of a fig that will beryllium updated. An editor later updated the citation to constituent to an Axios article.

Grokipedia accurately states that arsenic of October 2025, Wikipedia had much than 7 cardinal articles successful English, successful the main introduction about its older rival. But further down that page, the introduction muddies the h2o a spot by stating that Wikipedia had "over 6.8 cardinal articles successful English unsocial by October 2025."

According to Wikipedia's moving count connected the Size of Wikipedia page, the English tract had much than 6.9 cardinal articles arsenic of January 2025.

Disclosure: BERITAJA CEO Katherine Maher is the erstwhile CEO of the Wikimedia Foundation.