ChatGPT is Not the Only Chatbot Drawing Answers from Elon Musk's Grokipedia

ChatGPT has incorporated Grokipedia into its data sources, and it is not the only AI tool to do so. References to Elon Musk's AI-generated encyclopedia have also begun appearing in Google's AI Overview, AI Mode, and Gemini responses. Data indicates that this trend is on the rise, intensifying concerns over accuracy and the spread of misinformation as Musk seeks to reshape reality in his own image.

Since its launch as a distorted Wikipedia clone in late October last year, Grokipedia technically remains a secondary information source. Glen Allsopp, Head of Market Strategy & Research at SEO firm Ahrefs, informed The Verge that their testing revealed Grokipedia was cited in over 263,000 ChatGPT responses from 13.6 million prompts, referencing approximately 95,000 Grokipedia pages. In comparison, Allsopp noted that English Wikipedia appeared in 2.9 million responses. "While there's still a significant gap, it's quite impressive given how new they are," he remarked.

Based on datasets tracking billions of citations, Sartaj Rajpal, a researcher at the marketing platform Profound, stated that Grokipedia receives about 0.01% to 0.02% of all ChatGPT citations daily—a small but steadily growing percentage since mid-November.

Semrush, which monitors brand visibility in Google's AI tool answers through its AI Visibility Toolkit, observed a similar uptick in Grokipedia's visibility within AI-generated answers in December. However, it noted that compared to established reference platforms like Wikipedia, Grokipedia still occupies a secondary source position.

The frequency of Grokipedia citations on ChatGPT surpasses that of any other platform monitored by The Verge.