xAI’s Grokipedia is apparently racist and transphobic

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Elon Musk recently flipped the switch on yet another of his “world-changing” ideas, an online encyclopedia called Grokipedia, built by his AI startup, xAI. 

Musk bills it as the antidote to woke bias, a truth-telling alternative to Wikipedia. Its motto? “The truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth.” 

But depending on who’s reading, that “truth” might look suspiciously like propaganda in tech-bro cosplay.

At first glance, Grokipedia looks like Wikipedia’s younger, less-polished sibling: familiar layout, same headings and citations, even a clean list of sources at the bottom. 

The difference? Every article claims to have been “fact-checked” by Musk’s chatbot, Grok, though no one really knows what that means. 

The site boasts a whopping 885,279 entries, yet how they got there (AI? humans? interns?) remains a mystery.

Things get murky fast. Many Grokipedia entries are eerily similar to Wikipedia, until the topic veers into politics, science, or, say, Elon Musk himself. 

Then the tone changes. Suddenly, established science on vaccines, climate change, or COVID origins is replaced with hand-wavy skepticism and “alternative viewpoints.” 

Wikipedia says vaccines are safe; Grokipedia hedges that it’s an “ongoing hypothesis.” 

Wikipedia describes climate change as driven by humans. Grokipedia blames the media for “public alarm.”

And when the topics turn social, Grokipedia’s tone can get downright nasty. The entry on transgender people repeatedly uses the slur “transgenderism.” 

Chelsea Manning is deadnamed. The “Race and intelligence” page pushes debunked “race science” from fringe journals. (Via: The Verge)

Even the January 6th attack gets a revisionist spin, describing rioters as “mostly unarmed” citizens with “legitimate concerns.”

Meanwhile, Musk himself gets the royal treatment. His Grokipedia biography smooths over his family’s emerald wealth and omits any mention of his grandfather’s pro-apartheid leanings. 

His companies’ pages read like PR copy, SpaceX has no environmental issues, Cybertruck’s recalls barely exist, and Optimus the robot is described with near-religious optimism.

And if you’re looking for “DOGE”? Forget the government agency Musk once ran, Grokipedia will happily redirect you to the Shiba Inu meme instead. 

Maybe that’s fitting. In Grokipedia, truth really has gone to the dogs.