Grokipedia, Elon Musk’s encyclopedia, relies on “questionable” sources, study finds

When asked by AFP, the company xAI, which put the site online last month, had an automatic response: “Traditional media lies.”

Is Elon Musk’s encyclopedia trustworthy? Although his company xAI introduced Grokipedia online last month, which is considered a competitor to Wikipedia, the new online site contains thousands of references to unreliable sources, said researchers Harold Triedman and Alexios Mantzarlis of Cornell Tech, in a report consulted to AFP, Friday, November 14.

Created in 2001, Wikipedia is a collaborative encyclopedia maintained by volunteers, funded largely by donations, and whose pages can be written or modified by Internet users. Grokipedia’s content is generated by artificial intelligence, but it also cites multiple sources on each page. “It is clear that resource protection has been largely ignored at Grokipedia”the researchers said.

“This results in the inclusion of questionable sources and the dominance of potentially problematic sources”they explained. Their study, which sifted through hundreds of thousands of articles on the site, found that this trend was especially pronounced on politics-related topics.

For example, a page entitled “Clinton death toll” (“Clinton body count” in English), refers to a conspiracy theory claiming that the former US president and his wife have caused the deaths of several people, citing InfoWars, a right-wing site that spreads disinformation.

Other articles cited right-wing American and Indian media, Chinese and Iranian media or government websites containing anti-immigration, anti-Semitic and anti-Muslim language, according to the report. There are also articles that promote pseudoscience or conspiracy theories.

Requested by AFP, xAI generated an automated response: “Mainstream media lies”. “Grok’s goal and (Grokipedia) is the truth, the whole truth, nothing but the truth”Elon Musk reacted, stating that the encyclopedia could be accessed and used freely “free”.