xAI has launched Grokipedia, its Wikipedia-like online encyclopedia, and the similarities run deeper than initially expected.
Grokipedia’s current design is extremely minimalistic. Much like Wikipedia, its homepage features little more than a large search bar. Individual entries resemble stripped-down Wikipedia articles, complete with headings, subheadings, and citations—though I haven’t encountered any images on the site yet. While Wikipedia allows open editing by users, Grokipedia currently restricts this functionality. A prominent “Edit” button appears on only a few of my visited pages, and clicking it reveals a log of completed edits without identifying who proposed or made the changes. Worse still, there’s no option for me to suggest my own revisions.
Entries also claim to have been fact-checked by Grok—an assertion that raises eyebrows, given large language models’ well-documented tendency to fabricate plausible-sounding falsehoods and the ambiguity around when or how this “fact-checking” actually occurs.
Despite Elon Musk’s promise that Grokipedia would represent a “massive improvement” over Wikipedia, some of its content appears to directly copy from Wikipedia. For instance, at the bottom of the MacBook Air page, a notice reads: “Content adapted from Wikipedia under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License.” In some cases, the copying goes beyond adaptation: the PlayStation 5 and Lincoln Mark VIII pages are nearly identical—word for word, line for line—to their Wikipedia counterparts.
“Even Grokipedia needs Wikipedia to exist,” Lauren Dickinson, spokesperson for the Wikimedia Foundation—the nonprofit that operates Wikipedia—told The Verge. Her full statement appears at the end of this article.
This isn’t the first time xAI’s AI has been caught leaning heavily on Wikipedia. Last month, when an X user pointed out that Grok was citing Wikipedia pages, Musk responded, “We should have this resolved by year-end.”
Not all Grokipedia articles are direct derivatives of Wikipedia content, and some diverge in ways that invite controversy.
For example, both sites feature articles on climate change. Wikipedia’s entry states: “There is a near-unanimous scientific consensus that the climate is warming due to human activity. No scientific body of national or international standing disagrees with this view.”
In contrast, Grokipedia’s entry uses the term “consensus” only once, within a critical context: “Critics argue that the near-unanimous scientific consensus on anthropogenic causes of recent climate change is overstated due to selective categorization in literature reviews.” It further suggests that media outlets and advocacy groups like Greenpeace are “amplifying public alarm” as part of a “coordinated effort to frame the issue as an existential imperative,” influencing public discourse and policy “not always grounded in commensurate empirical evidence.”
According to metadata in the site’s footer, Grokipedia currently hosts over 885,000 articles—far fewer than Wikipedia’s roughly 7 million English-language pages. Still, this is an early release: the homepage prominently displays a v0.1 version number.
Below is Dickinson’s full statement:
We are still learning how Grokipedia works.
Since 2001, Wikipedia has been a cornerstone of internet knowledge. Hosted by the Wikimedia Foundation, it remains the only top-tier website operated by a nonprofit. Unlike newer projects, Wikipedia’s strengths are clear: transparent policies, rigorous volunteer oversight, and a robust culture of continuous improvement. Wikipedia is an encyclopedia designed to inform billions of readers without promoting any particular agenda.
Wikipedia’s knowledge is—and always will be—human-made. Through open collaboration and consensus, people from diverse backgrounds have built a neutral, living record of human understanding—one 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.
Wikipedia’s nonprofit independence—free from ads and data sales—also sets it apart from for-profit alternatives. These qualities have made Wikipedia the most trusted resource for over two decades.
Many attempts to create Wikipedia alternatives have come and gone; none have disrupted our mission. As we approach Wikipedia’s 25th anniversary, we remain focused on delivering free, reliable knowledge built by our dedicated community of volunteers. For more on how Wikipedia works, visit our website and new blog series.
