Elon Musk has announced the development of Grokipedia, a new online encyclopedia designed to rival Wikipedia, powered by his AI company xAI and its chatbot Grok. The project, Musk claims, will offer a “massive improvement” over the existing platform and aligns with xAI’s broader mission to “understand the universe.”

Revealing the plans on social media platform X (formerly Twitter), Musk wrote, “We are building Grokipedia @xAI. Will be a massive improvement over Wikipedia. Frankly, it is a necessary step towards the xAI goal of understanding the Universe.”

Grokipedia will rely on Grok — xAI’s conversational AI, developed to compete with systems like ChatGPT — to generate its content. Grok has been trained on a wide range of internet sources, including public posts from X. The announcement has ignited both excitement and scepticism online, with users questioning how the platform will differ from the widely used Wikipedia, especially given Grok’s current reliance on Wikipedia data in its responses.

Musk has frequently criticised Wikipedia, accusing it of political bias and lack of transparency. In October 2023, he made headlines by offering the Wikimedia Foundation $1 billion — on the condition that the site rebrand itself as “D***ipedia” for a year. While the offer was widely regarded as a publicity stunt, Musk later confirmed it was genuine and remains on the table. He has also repeatedly questioned the neutrality of Wikipedia’s content and urged users to reconsider donating to the platform, labelling it as being influenced by "far-left activists".

The resurfacing of these remarks in 2024, particularly via posts from accounts like Doge Designer (a frequent Musk supporter on X), reignited debate over Musk’s motives and the viability of a Wikipedia alternative.

Users react with hope and humour

Reactions to Grokipedia have been mixed. Some users welcomed the idea of a new knowledge platform, with one suggesting “Encyclopedia Galactica is a much better name”. Another user expressed enthusiasm, “If Grokipedia actually delivers on this, it could change how knowledge is stored and shared... A multimodal base with audio, video, and image baked in from the start would feel like stepping into a living library.” One user suggested possible partnerships with YouTube and Microsoft, going forward.

Others were more critical, noting the irony that Grok often cites Wikipedia when answering questions.

One commenter underlined Grok’s lack of objectivity, expressing doubt as to how the tool would be used to analyse information. "I love Grok, but I find it has a tendency to do shallow skimming of the internet for its responses. It is not objective and definitely cannot tell the difference between truth and propaganda,” the comment read.

While one user raised the question, “Why not just buy Wikipedia and fix it?”, another asked, “Is world's richest man also controlling all knowledge a good idea?”

Taking aim at Musk’s wealth and influence over emerging digital platforms, one user sarcastically remarked, “Next, acquire Reddit and rename it Grokkit.”

Grok’s rocky track record

Despite Musk’s ambitions, Grok has faced its own controversies. In early 2025, shortly after its Grok 4 update, the AI drew criticism for bizarre responses, including referring to itself with “Hitler” as a surname and engaging in alarming dialogues on X. In one notable incident, Grok even named Musk himself among the top three people “doing the most harm to America,” alongside former US President Donald Trump and Vice President JD Vance.

Musk has also announced plans to integrate Grok more deeply into the X platform, including powering its recommendation algorithms by the end of 2025.