Why has Elon Musk boycotted Wikipedia in the past? Everything the Tesla owner has said about the encyclopedia as he launches its rival, Grokipedia

Tesla CEO Elon Musk had launched Grokipedia, an AI-generated digital encyclopaedia. In a tweet, Musk claimed that Grokipedia is already "better than Wikipedia." He further added that the company is set to work on Version 1.0 and that it'll be "10x better." For the unversed, Musk has previously criticized Wikipedia for being biased.

He recently claimed that the purpose of Grokipedia was to share "the whole truth, and nothing but the truth." According to reports by NDTV, Grokipedia has more than 885,000 articles and is totally open-source. This means that anybody can use the platform without making any payment or having any subscription. 

Earlier this year, in January, Elon Musk urged boycotting Wikipedia. This surfaced after his speech during Donald Trump's inauguration ceremony went viral. For the unversed, at the time Musk made headlines for making certain hand gestures that sparked comparisons to a Nazi salute. Wikipedia mentioned the same and grabbed the billionaire's attention. Elon Musk then tweeted,

"Since legacy media propaganda is considered a "valid" source by Wikipedia, it naturally simply becomes an extension of legacy media propaganda!"

This prompted Wikipedia co-founder Jimmy Wales to respond to the allegations. According to Wales, whatever had been mentioned in the page were facts. Wales even highlighted that Wikipedia was not "mainstream media propaganda." Previously, in December 2024, Musk criticized the editing of Wikipedia by calling the platform "Wokepedia."

On September 30, Musk responded to a tweet in which an X user claimed that Wikipedia was a biased platform that left-wing activists maintained. To this, the Tesla CEO said that they were building Grokipedia and called it a "massive improvement over Wikipedia." He wrote, 

"We are building Grokipedia @xAI. Will be a massive improvement over Wikipedia. Frankly, it is a necessary step towards the xAI goal of understanding the universe."

Everything to know about Elon Musk's Grokipedia

According to reports by Business Standard, while Wikipedia's content was dependent on contributors and editors, the scene will be different for Grokipedia. The reports suggest that Grokipedia will get its data and information fact-checked by Grok.

As of now, users do not have the access to edit articles found on Grokipedia. However, Elon Musk said that they will be "able to ask Grok to add/modify/delete articles, and it will either take the action or tell you it won't and why." While Musk claimed that Grokipedia will work much better than Wikipedia, Forbes pointed out portions where the content in the latter was exactly similar to the one mentioned in the former platform.

According to Elon Musk, this issue will be resolved by the end of the year. Grokipedia went live on Monday, October 27, but witnessed a rough start. The platform went offline for a brief period before bouncing back. The platform has received mixed reactions as of now.

The Economic Times reported that several users discovered some information provided on Grokipedia to be resonating with Elon Musk's conservative perspective. According to the outlet, the users also found that certain facts were omitted on Grokipedia, which initially were present on Wikipedia. While many questioned its fairness, others believed that the platform was actually neutral.