Elon Musk Wants to Create "Grokipedia", an AI Encyclopedia Competitor to Wikipedia

Tesla boss and owner of X (formerly Twitter), Elon Musk, announced his plans to create Grokipedia, an online encyclopedia powered entirely by artificial intelligence (AI). 

The project will be run through Musk's AI startup, xAI, which will leverage the Grok chatbot previously launched on the X platform. In a post on his personal account, Musk said Grokipedia would be better, more comprehensive, and more neutral than Wikipedia.

According to a report by media outlet Mint, unlike Wikipedia which is managed by thousands of volunteers, Musk wants Grokipedia to be fully AI-driven. 

Musk provided an example: the Grok chatbot will utilize inference capabilities to read Wikipedia pages, then assess which information is true, partially true, false, or lacking context. 

Inference in the context of AI is the process by which a model draws conclusions or produces output (such as text, images, or answers) based on previously learned data. 

Afterward, Grok will rewrite the page, removing any errors, correcting any half-truths, and adding any missing context. This result will be published on Grokipedia.

Previously, Musk had announced that Grok would be used to power the recommendation algorithm in X. This way, users could organize their feeds simply by giving direct commands to the chatbot. 

Grok itself has the advantage of being connected to real-time data from X, allowing it to detect trends and quickly present the latest information. Musk aims for X's feeds to be fully controlled by Grok AI by the end of 2025.

Musk's desire to create a Wikipedia competitor doesn't seem spontaneous. Musk has long been known as a harsh critic of Wikipedia.

The billionaire with a net worth of US$459 billion has frequently accused the online encyclopedia of being politically biased and overly influenced by “woke” ideology. 

The word woke initially became popular in the United States as a positive term, meaning “aware” or “aware” of social injustice. 

However, this term has recently been used cynically or negatively by those who consider this attitude to have gone too far, to be overly political, or to be biased in a certain direction.

Musk also questioned the funding of the Wikimedia Foundation, the non-profit foundation that manages Wikipedia and relies on public donations. 

In 2023, Musk even made a controversial joke, offering $ 1 billion if Wikipedia would change its name to "Dickipedia." The joke sparked controversy, but it illustrated Musk's sharp criticism of the platform.

Share this post