Elon Musk's Grokipedia launched on Monday, but the encyclopedia powered by xAI's assistant Grok that's built to rival Wikipedia, crashed shortly after — leaving the site briefly inaccessible to users.
The big picture: Grokipedia was launched after Musk complained about "propaganda" on Wikipedia and, after a stuttering start, it was live late Monday evening with nearly 900,000 articles available, according to the homepage.
- When asked for comment on the site crash, a representative for x.ai said in an email: "Legacy Media Lies." They did not immediately respond to Axios' follow-up question Monday evening on the reason for the crash.
How it works: Many entries closely resemble their Wikipedia counterparts, but Musk's right-leaning approach shapes how some topics are framed. Musk's own Grokipedia page features a "Recognition and Long-Term Vision" section, compared to Wikipedia's "Accolades."
- "His long-term vision prioritizes safeguarding human consciousness against existential threats, emphasizing the establishment of a self-sustaining multi-planetary civilization as a hedge against planetary-scale catastrophes on Earth," the page states.
- A page on former President Biden highlights facts about his policies and historical events, along with what Grokipedia calls "severe empirical setbacks" during his presidency — a significant language difference from his Wikipedia entry.
The other side: Wikipedia co-founder Jimmy Wales pushed back on Musk's criticism after the billionaire objected to how his Nazi salute allegations were described on the search engine earlier this year.
- "Is there anything you consider inaccurate in that description? Wales said on X in January. "It's true you did the gesture (twice) and that people did compare it to a Nazi salute (many people) and it's true that you denied it had any meaning."
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