Last month, tech billionaire Elon Musk launched Grokipedia, an AI-powered platform, to rival online encyclopedia Wikipedia.<\/p>\n
\u201cGrokipedia will exceed Wikipedia by several orders of magnitude in breadth, depth and accuracy,\u201d Musk posted on X the day after his site went live on October 27.<\/p>\n
Recommended Stories list of 3 itemsend of list<\/p>\n
In the age of generative artificial intelligence and AI-assisted search engines, Wikipedia remains an information repository authored by humans.<\/p>\n
\nGrokipedia will exceed Wikipedia by several orders of magnitude in breadth, depth and accuracy https:\/\/t.co\/Nt4M6vqEZu<\/a><\/p>\n
\u2014 Elon Musk (@elonmusk) October 28, 2025<\/a><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n
Yet PolitiFact found Grokipedia\u2019s articles are often almost entirely lifted from Wikipedia. And when the entries differ, Grokipedia\u2019s information quality and sourcing are problematic and error-prone, making it a less reliable research tool.<\/p>\n
Musk said on an\u00a0October 31 episode of the \u201cAll-In\u201d tech and business podcast\u00a0that his team instructed his company\u2019s chatbot, Grok<\/a>, to go through the top 1 million Wikipedia articles and then \u201cadd, modify and delete\u201d.<\/p>\n
\u201cSo that means research the rest of the internet, whatever is publicly available, and correct the Wikipedia articles, fix mistakes, but also add a lot more context,\u201d he said on the podcast.<\/p>\n
Grokipedia articles often contain the text \u201cFact-checked by Grok<\/a>\u201c.<\/p>\n
PolitiFact reviewed Grokipedia articles and found that when they include language that\u2019s different from what appeared on Wikipedia, the new content:<\/p>\n
\n
- Is not supported by citations;<\/li>\n
- Does not provide references; or<\/li>\n
- Introduces misleading or opinionated claims.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n
Grokipedia often also removes context from its articles.<\/p>\n
A sample of Grokipedia\u2019s 885,279 articles reveals they are subject to a similar AI-related phenomenon we first saw in May, prior to the tool\u2019s unveiling. Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F Kennedy Jr then released a Make America Healthy Again report that contained several erroneous citations, including crediting sources that did not exist.<\/p>\n
Joseph Reagle, Northeastern University associate professor of communication studies, said Grokipedia misunderstands Wikipedia\u2019s and AI\u2019s strengths.<\/p>\n
\u201cWikipedia\u2019s merits are that it is the result of a community of thousands of people diligently working to create high-quality content,\u201d Reagle said, while AI is useful when it\u2019s interactive and accepts pushback.<\/p>\n
Hundreds of thousands of volunteers\u00a0worldwide contribute content to Wikipedia, guided by the platform\u2019s editorial policies and guidelines.<\/p>\n
The Wikimedia Foundation, the nonprofit that operates Wikipedia, is aware of Grokipedia\u2019s copying problem.<\/p>\n
\u201cEven Grokipedia needs Wikipedia to exist,\u201d said Selena Decklemann, chief product and technology officer at the Wikimedia Foundation, in a statement to PolitiFact. \u201cWikipedia\u2019s content is open source by design; we expect it will be used in good faith to educate. This issue is especially urgent as platforms like Grokipedia increasingly draw on our articles, selectively extracting content \u2013 written by thousands of volunteers \u2013 and filtering it through opaque and unaccountable algorithms.\u201d<\/p>\n
Entries are nearly identical, except for wrong or missing references<\/p>\n
We looked at Grokipedia articles covering various topics including science, music and economics. In many articles we reviewed, Grokipedia links to Wikipedia articles with this statement: \u201cThe content is adapted from Wikipedia, licensed under Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License.\u201d<\/p>\n
That means Wikipedia\u2019s licensing allows Grokipedia to\u00a0copy, redistribute and adapt\u00a0the content with an attribution. It also requires Grokipedia to give the same permissions for its adapted content. (There are some articles that don\u2019t copy from Wikipedia and don\u2019t feature this statement, such as the article for\u00a0Joseph Stalin.)<\/p>\n
Grokipedia\u2019s article structure is similar to Wikipedia\u2019s, which features reference lists at the bottom. But in some instances, Grokipedia copies Wikipedia articles while omitting their citations and reference lists.<\/p>\n
Grokipedia\u2019s article for \u201cMonday,\u201d for example, includes information about the day of the week\u2019s etymology, related religious observances and cultural references. But it contains no citations other than to say it was adapted from Wikipedia.<\/p>\n
The Grokipedia article was a 96 percent match of Wikipedia\u2019s \u201cMonday\u201d article, according to Copyscape, a plagiarism checker. The Wikipedia article, however, listed 22 references.<\/p>\n
Sometimes Grokipedia botches citations. In the entry for \u201cculminating point,\u201d Grokipedia cited the wrong book chapter in which military theorist Carl von Clausewitz introduced the concept. The rest of the article text is copied from Wikipedia.<\/p>\n
One article that differs significantly from its Wikipedia counterpart is the entry for \u201cHello\u201d, a song by British singer Adele. Multiple items in the Grokipedia reference list are Instagram reels that provide secondhand, unattributed information and commentary. Wikipedia\u2019s standards say such user-generated content is \u201cgenerally unacceptable as sources\u201d.<\/p>\n
In the entry for the Canadian singer Feist, Grokipedia copied from Wikipedia but added a line saying her father died in May 2021. The citation led to Vice\u2019s\u00a02017 ranking\u00a0of the 60 best Canadian indie rock songs, an article that doesn\u2019t mention the death of Feist\u2019s father, who was still alive that year.<\/p>\n
Grokipedia lacks transparency on correcting errors<\/p>\n
PolitiFact found at least one instance when Grokipedia introduced misleading<\/a> information.<\/p>\n
The Grokipedia and Wikipedia articles for \u201cNobel Prize in Physics\u201d are largely the same, but one sentence Grokipedia added said, \u201cPhysics is traditionally the first award presented in the Nobel Prize ceremony.\u201d It did not provide a citation, and it appears to be wrong: In at least the past few years, the Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine was awarded first.<\/p>\n
\u201cUnlike Grokipedia, which relies on rapid AI-generated content with limited transparency and oversight, Wikipedia\u2019s processes are open to public review and rigorously document the sources behind every article,\u201d Decklemann said.<\/p>\n
Wikipedia allows anyone to contribute and edit articles, and ensures transparency by making the history of an article viewable. Some volunteers have advanced permissions and are equipped to address negative behaviour on the platform.<\/p>\n
However, Wikipedia has come under scrutiny after an editor blocked changes<\/a> to an article on the Gaza genocide page.<\/p>\n
On Grokipedia, registered users can suggest edits to published articles. But Grokipedia has no feature allowing readers to view what edits have been made. It is unclear what happens when there are errors<\/a> \u2013 whether a human or Grok corrects them, how those changes are deliberated, and how long it takes to update pages.<\/p>\n
PolitiFact Researcher Caryn Baird contributed to this report.<\/p>\n