Grokipedia, Elon Musk's New AI-Powered Encyclopedia to Rival Wikipedia

Elon Musk set his sights long ago on changing the established order through his technology, and this Tuesday he took another step forward with the launch of Grokipedia. The magnate and his company xAI aim for this new tool to become the alternative to Wikipedia, the free, collaborative, and multilingual encyclopedia that has reigned for over two decades among internet users seeking all kinds of information.

The site, dubbed version 0.1, already boasts over 885,000 articles—compared to Wikipedia's more than seven million in English—and its content is generated by Artificial Intelligence (AI) through the generative assistant Grok, though it also cites various sources on each page. The launch is accompanied by the promise of a new version 1.0, which the American entrepreneur claims will be "10 times better" than the current online version, which he already considers "better than Wikipedia."

In truth, the crusade of the man who supported Donald Trump in the last U.S. elections—and who was part of his administration until last May—against Wikipedia is not new. In 2024, he accused the site of being "controlled by far-left activists" and urged people to stop donating to the platform, emphasizing that "Wikipedia cannot be used as a definitive source because the editorial control there is extremely biased towards the left."

Musk promises an open and automated model to differentiate from the dogmatism or political inclination that, in his view, Wikipedia presents. "The goal of Grok and Grokipedia.com is the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. We will never be perfect, but we shall nonetheless strive towards that goal," Musk stated on 'X'—his own social network—following the launch, which was initially scheduled for late September but was delayed to "remove propaganda."

In this way, Musk once again challenges the rules of the Internet after transforming Twitter into X and launching Grok, his own artificial intelligence chatbot, which now also becomes the engine of Grokipedia. According to the entrepreneur, users will soon have the opportunity to ask Grok to add, modify, or delete articles, and it will either take action or explain why it won't.

Time will tell if Musk's new idea ultimately achieves its goal and dethrones what remains the world's largest free encyclopedia on the web. Jimmy Wales and Larry Sanger were responsible for launching Wikipedia in 2001 as an extension of Nupedia, a previous, slower, and more formal project.