Grokipedia sourcing info from the internets biggest neo-Nazi forum, researchers say
Elon Musk’s foray into the world of online encyclopedias with Grokipedia, a self-proclaimed rival to Wikipedia, has raised significant concerns regarding the credibility and reliability of its content. A recent analysis conducted by researchers from Cornell Tech has uncovered that Grokipedia frequently cites sources that are widely discredited and even associated with hate speech, including notorious neo-Nazi sites like Stormfront. This analysis, titled “What did Elon change? A comprehensive analysis of Grokipedia,” is the first comprehensive examination of Grokipedia’s entries, which have ballooned to over a million since its launch less than a month ago. The researchers found that Grokipedia’s articles not only leaned heavily on fringe sources like Infowars and VDare—both known for promoting extremist views—but also exhibited a concerning lack of editorial rigor compared to Wikipedia’s stringent standards.
The study highlights a stark contrast in citation practices between Grokipedia and Wikipedia. While Wikipedia emphasizes the use of reliable, verifiable sources and adheres to community-driven guidelines that promote neutrality, Grokipedia appears to lack a transparent editorial process. Users cannot edit articles directly but can submit suggestions, which the xAI team reviews. This raises questions about the involvement of Musk’s Grok chatbot, which has previously been criticized for generating hate speech. The report notes that Grokipedia articles are often longer and more verbose than their Wikipedia counterparts, yet they contain a higher proportion of unreliable citations. This trend is particularly pronounced in politically charged entries, where Grokipedia seems to prioritize rewriting high-quality Wikipedia articles with a bias towards controversial figures and topics.
Musk’s motivations for creating Grokipedia, which he has disparagingly referred to as “Wokipedia,” stem from his belief that Wikipedia harbors a left-wing bias. However, the emergence of Grokipedia, with its troubling reliance on extremist content, raises critical questions about the future of information dissemination and the potential normalization of fringe ideologies. As the platform continues to evolve, it remains to be seen whether it can establish a credible editorial framework that upholds the integrity of information—a challenge that Wikipedia has navigated for years through its community-driven governance and commitment to accuracy.
Elon Musk’s anti-woke Wikipedia rival,
Grokipedia
, is pulling information from widely blacklisted sources and known neo-Nazi sites, according to two researchers.
The analysis, ”
What did Elon change? A comprehensive analysis of Grokipedia
,” was conducted by two Cornell Tech researchers and has yet to be peer reviewed. It’s the first attempt to comprehensively scrape the site’s entries which numbered more than 880,000 at the time. As of publishing, Grokipedia v0.2 hosts 1,016,241 articles.
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They found that the website frequently cited blacklisted sources and sites deemed low-quality by academics, including Stormfront. Stormfront is considered the first major hate site on the Internet and the most popular forum for white nationalists, according to the
Southern Poverty Law Center (SLPC)
. It was founded by former Ku Klux Klan leader Don Black in 1995, and long hosted white supremacist, neo-Nazi message boards.
In addition, researchers found Grokipedia cited far-right conspiracy peddler Infowars 34 times, and pulled from VDare, a white nationalist publication designated as as a
hate group by the SPLC
, 107 times. Similar entries on Wikipedia cited mainly mainstream news publications.
“We find that the elected official and controversial article subsets showed less similarity between their Wikipedia version and Grokipedia version than other pages,” the report reads. “The random subset illustrates that Grokipedia focused rewriting the highest quality articles on Wikipedia, with a bias towards biographies, politics, society, and history.”
Researchers also found that, on the whole, Grokipedia articles were “longer and more verbose” than Wikipedia articles, citing twice as many sources but with a higher share of unreliable citations.
It’s been less than a month since Musk launched the online encyclopedia, intended as competition to what the X CEO began calling “Wokipedia” or ”
Dickipedia
.” Musk has long criticized the nonprofit resource for having an alleged left wing bias. “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,” the billionaire wrote in an X post at the time of launch. Users quickly noticed, however, that Grokipedia was plagiarizing many of its entries directly from Wikipedia, with exceptions for its more political charged articles.
Grokipedia’s editorial process is not clearly outlined. Users don’t appear to be able to edit articles directly on the site, but can submit suggestions which the xAI team filters. It’s not apparant if the titular Grok chatbot is involved in the review system, although Musk has said it is
involved in fact-checking
. The chatbot has previously come under fire for
spewing hate speech
and praising the actions of Adolf Hitler. Musk himself has
reinstated white supremacist figures
on X and engaged in far-right talking points and
imagery
.
Conversely, Wikipedia’s content and citations practices are governed by
five community pillars
, which include an emphasis on primary sources and general neutrality. “All articles must strive for verifiable accuracy with citations based on reliable sources, especially when the topic is controversial or is about a living person,” one pillar reads. Wikipedia also discourages the use of “websites and publications expressing views that are widely acknowledged as extremist.” Infowars, for example, has been deemed a
deprecated source and blacklisted
by Wikipedia due to persistent spamming and its reputation for publishing fake news and conspiracy theories.
“The publicly determined, community-oriented rules that try to maintain Wikipedia as a comprehensive, reliable, human-generated source are not in application on Grokipedia,” report author Harold Triedman told
NBC News
.
