SFGate columnist Drew Magary recently tested Elon Musk’s new “Wikipedia clone” known as Grokipedia and reported finding it rife with racism, antisemitism, and falsehoods.
“There is nothing this man cannot make cheaper, wonkier and 20% more Hitler-y,” Magary writes, critiquing Musk’s latest attempt at creating “his own optimized version of Wikipedia.”
For example, Grokipedia’s entry on Adolf Hitler includes a peculiar section titled “Debates and Intent on Functionality,” which, as Magary notes, is absent from Wikipedia’s corresponding article. The passage reads:
> “The historiographical debate on the intent and functionality of Nazi racial policies, particularly the Holocaust, centers on whether the systematic extermination of Jews was the fulfillment of Adolf Hitler’s premeditated master plan or the unintended outcome of bureaucratic radicalization and wartime improvisation.”
Magary highlights this as a dangerously misleading interpretation: “You already know about people who deny that the Holocaust ever happened, so kudos to Grokipedia for introducing, ‘The Holocaust was real, but also it was just a happy accident!’ as a new means of discrediting Jewish history.”
While it is unclear who authored this passage, the entry links vaguely to the Associated Press, but the sourcing remains questionable and ambiguous.
Musk’s site employs a confusing combination of crowdsourcing and proprietary AI software—similar to the algorithms appended to Twitter/X—which predictably results in virulent and problematic content across its more than 850,000 entries. Magary admits that he relied heavily on Wikipedia to verify information: “I never would have sorted this without Wikipedia, so thanks, Wiki!”
Unlike Wikipedia, which is non-profit and entirely human-written, Musk’s Grokipedia operates on opposing principles. Magary describes Elon Musk as “perhaps, second to Donald Trump, our greatest disseminator of bad faith,” suggesting that Musk’s priorities shape this project’s bias.
“It makes sense that he would cobble together a half-assed competitor to Wikipedia motivated by profit, and by his own demented worldview,” Magary writes. He calls Grokipedia “a reactionary product,” a characterization he found blatant during his exploration of the site.
The platform appears chaotic, essentially attempting to rewrite much of history to suit Musk’s interests. Shockingly, when Magary searched for a Grokipedia entry about Grokipedia itself, none existed. He quips:
> “More like WOKE-ipedia. Am I right, fellow plantation owners?! Huh? Anyway, if you think these suggested results make sense, then you’re on more ketamine than Musk himself.”
Regarding sensitive topics such as slavery, Magary criticizes Grokipedia’s so-called “slurbot” for freely denigrating Black and mixed-race individuals or for outright ignoring harmful content altogether—for instance, there is no Grokipedia entry for the N-word.
Musk, according to Magary, tailored Grokipedia directly to appeal to his base. “I got the feeling that his pet project tweaked hot-button entries to tilt MAGA, and then just stole content for all of the normal stuff,” he writes. This mechanism serves as a “whitewashing machine” aimed at spreading racist falsehoods.
Magary concludes that the site has no real purpose other than to strategically insert lies into what should be a reliable reference. This renders Grokipedia not only a malevolent product but also a poor one.
“But hey, maybe Elon didn’t mean for his baby to be such a piece of s—,” Magary jokes. “Maybe it was just the unintended outcome of bureaucratic radicalization and wartime improvisation.”
https://www.alternet.org/wikipedia-clone-musk/
