Elon Musk announced via a post on X that Grokipedia.com had officially launched its early beta version. He tweeted, “Grokipedia.com version 0.1 is now live. Version 1.0 will be 10X better, but even at 0.1 it’s better than Wikipedia imo.” This marks the public unveiling of xAI’s new AI-powered encyclopedia, developed under Musk’s broader technology umbrella.
Grokipedia vs Wikipedia
At launch, Grokipedia v0.1, features a dark-themed interface reminiscent of Wikipedia and already includes about 885,000 articles. Rather than relying primarily on human editors contributing in a crowd-sourced fashion, Grokipedia’s articles are generated and fact-checked by Grok, the AI chatbot by xAI. The site claims to deliver “real-time” updates and fewer constraints on content editing.
The interface is very similar to Wikipedia with the homepage featuring the title “Grokipedia v0.1” alongside a simple search bar inviting users to submit queries. Breaking away from Wikipedia’s usual ‘accolades’ section, Grokipedia wrapped up with a part called ‘Recognition and Long-Term Vision.’
An Economic Times report suggested that many entries appeared to be heavily derived from Wikipedia, raising questions about originality and accuracy. The launch, though public, is noted as an early-stage product, Musk emphasized that version 1.0 will be significantly improved.
The idea behind Grokipedia
The idea of Grokipedia originated when Musk publicly criticised Wikipedia’s editorial practices, calling out its bias. He then went on to announce in early October that xAI was building a ‘massive improvement’ over Wikipedia and that it served as “a necessary step towards the xAI objective of understanding the Universe.”
Some of the other critics say that Grokipedia has limited visible editing interface. This will dissuade users from making suggestions and keeps contributor identity very opaque.
Interested users can access the platform by simply searching for Grokipedia on Google, or clicking on this link – Grokipedia.com. However, many users said that the platform remained publicly accessible for only around an hour before it restricted access to visitors.