Elon Musk’s Grokipedia contains copied Wikipedia pages

xAI’s Grokipedia, its Wikipedia-like online encyclopedia, is now live. The similarities spell deeper than expected.

Grokipedia’s plan is beauteous basal close now; similar Wikipedia, the homepage is mostly conscionable a large hunt bar, and entries lucifer precise basal Wikipedia entries, with headings, subheadings, and citations. I haven’t seen immoderate photos connected the tract yet. Wikipedia lets users edit pages, but it doesn’t look that users tin presently bash that connected Grokipedia; a large edit fastener astatine the apical lone appeared connected a fewer pages for me, and erstwhile I clicked the button, it lone showed edits that had already been completed without specifying who is really suggested oregon made the changes, and I wasn’t capable to suggest changes of my own. 

Entries besides assertion that Grok has fact-checked them — a arguable idea, fixed how ample connection models thin to marque up mendacious “facts” — and however agelong agone the “fact check” happened.

However, contempt Elon Musk promising that Grokipedia would beryllium a “massive improvement” implicit Wikipedia, immoderate articles look to beryllium cribbing accusation from Wikipedia. At the bottommost of the leafage for the MacBook Air, for example, you tin spot this message: “The contented is adapted from Wikipedia, licensed nether Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License.” In immoderate cases, the cribbing goes farther than a rewrite: I’ve besides seen that connection connected pages for the PlayStation 5 and the Lincoln Mark VIII, and some of those pages are astir identical — word-for-word, line-for-line — to their Wikipedia counterparts.

“Even Grokipedia needs Wikipedia to exist,” Lauren Dickinson, a spokesperson for the Wikimedia Foundation, the non-profit that operates Wikipedia tells The Verge. You tin work Dickinson’s afloat connection successful afloat astatine the extremity of this article.

It’s not the archetypal clip xAI’s AI has been caught pointing to Wikipedia; past month, successful effect to an X idiosyncratic pointing retired that Grok cites Wikipedia pages, Musk said that “we should person this fixed by extremity of year.”

Not each Grokipedia articles are based straight connected Wikipedia ones, and immoderate volition beryllium controversial. 

While some sites person articles connected clime change, for example, Wikipedia’s leafage points retired that “There is simply a astir unanimous technological statement that the clime is warming and that this is caused by quality activities. No technological assemblage of nationalist oregon planetary lasting disagrees with this view.” 

In Grokipedia’s entry, meanwhile, the connection “unanimous” lone appears successful 1 paragraph: “Critics contend that claims of near-unanimous technological statement connected anthropogenic causes dominating caller clime alteration overstate statement owed to selective categorization successful lit reviews.” It suggests that the media and advocacy organizations similar Greenpiece are “contributing to heightened nationalist alarm,” and are portion of “coordinated efforts to framework the contented arsenic an existential imperative, influencing nationalist sermon and argumentation without ever grounding successful proportionate empirical evidence.”

According to a ticker astatine the bottommost of the homepage, Grokipedia has implicit 885,000 articles; Wikipedia presently maintains astir 7 cardinal English pages. However, this is an aboriginal mentation of Grokipedia — it has a v0.1 mentation fig connected the homepage.

Here is Dickinson’s afloat statement:

We’re inactive successful the process of knowing however Grokipedia works.

Since 2001, Wikipedia has been the backbone of cognition connected the internet. Hosted by the Wikimedia Foundation, it remains the lone apical website successful the satellite tally by a nonprofit. Unlike newer projects, Wikipedia’s strengths are clear: it has transparent policies, rigorous unpaid oversight, and a beardown civilization of continuous improvement. Wikipedia is an encyclopedia, written to pass billions of readers without promoting a peculiar constituent of view. 

Wikipedia’s cognition is – and ever volition beryllium – human. Through unfastened collaboration and consensus, radical from each backgrounds physique a neutral, surviving grounds of quality knowing – 1 that reflects our diverseness and corporate curiosity. This human-created cognition is what AI companies trust connected to make content; adjacent Grokipedia needs Wikipedia to exist. 

Wikipedia’s nonprofit independency — with nary ads and nary data-selling — besides sets it isolated from for-profit alternatives. All of these strengths person kept Wikipedia a apical trusted assets for much than 2 decades.

Many experiments to make alternate versions of Wikipedia person happened before; it doesn’t interfere with our enactment oregon mission. As we attack Wikipedia’s 25th anniversary, Wikipedia volition proceed focusing connected providing free, trustworthy cognition built by its dedicated unpaid community. For much accusation astir however Wikipedia works, sojourn our website and caller blog series.