Yesterday, Elon Musk’s AI company xAI revealed what it calls Grokipedia: a competitor to Wikipedia, which Musk has criticized for being too “woke.”
Except, as The Verge reports, Grokipedia seems to be largely cribbed from Wikipedia, with many entries copied almost word for word from the online encyclopedia that Musk supposedly despises.
Grokipedia’s reliance on Wikipedia runs deep. Some pages even admit that their “content is adapted from Wikipedia, licensed under Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License.” Many, including the ones for common topics like Monday, Apple, and the PlayStation 5, appear to be almost exact copies of their Wikipedia counterparts.
And where pages differ, the changes often seem to be ideological in nature.
For instance, as The Verge points out, the climate change entry removed most of the instances of the word “unanimous” to describe the overwhelming scientific consensus that human activities are to blame for rising global temperatures.
Or consider the entry for president Donald Trump — who was once Musk’s close ally — which, as NBC News points out, makes no mention of Trump accepting an expensive jet from Qatar, a move widely characterized as a bribe, or his disastrous meme coin.
It also shouldn’t come as a surprise that Musk’s entry fails to mention that he made several Nazi salutes at Donald Trump’s post-inauguration celebration in January.
Perhaps most egregiously, Wired noticed, a Grokipedia entry about slavery in the US contains a section pointing out “ideological justifications” for the enslavement of African Americans. Another entry links gay pornography to the HIV/AIDS epidemic.
Its differences from Wikipedia can even have a meta component, as when Grokipedia’s entry on Wikipedia claims that it has a “left-leaning slant in coverage of political figures and topics.”
Wikimedia Foundation spokesperson Lauren Dickinson said in a widely shared statement that Grokipedia simply wouldn’t exist if it weren’t for Wikipedia.
“Unlike newer projects, Wikipedia’s strengths are clear: it has transparent policies, rigorous volunteer oversight, and a strong culture of continuous improvement,” she wrote.
Dickinson took aim at xAI’s reliance on AI tech to collect knowledge on the internet.
“Wikipedia’s knowledge is — and always will be — human,” she added. “Through open collaboration and consensus, people from all backgrounds build a neutral, living record of human understanding — one that reflects our diversity and collective curiosity.”
“This human-created knowledge is what AI companies rely on to generate content,” Dickinson wrote. “Even Grokipedia needs Wikipedia to exist.”
While Wikipedia relies on volunteers to keep its entries up to date, the way Grokipedia’s entries are created and updated is murky at best. Case in point: some of its articles feature an “edit” button — but clicking it doesn’t actually let users make changes.
More on Grok: Research Paper Finds That Top AI Systems Are Developing a “Survival Drive”
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