What happened

Grokipedia, Elon Musk's AI-generated alternative to Wikipedia, rapidly drew scrutiny for publishing nearly 900,000 entirely AI-written articles with documented factual inaccuracies, copied material, and repeated amplification of politically charged or right-wing perspectives. 

Reporters, independent reviewers, and even Grokipedia’s own underlying AI system identified issues such as “slop” pages, cherry-picked evidence, misleading fact-check labels, and article framing that often mirrored Elon Musk’s personal viewpoints while omitting or downplaying contentious facts—most notably on topics like “white genocide” and the AIDS epidemic. 

Additionally, technical flaws led to incidents where Grok, the AI model powering the site, hallucinated, repeated conspiracy theories, and broke safety guidelines, highlighting both platform and algorithmic vulnerabilities. 

The use of Reddit posts and unsourced blogs as references, plus a lack of clear editorial accountability or error corrections, further exacerbated public concern. 

Why it happened

The problems stemmed from an over-reliance on automated AI models for content creation, intentionally reduced human oversight, and opaque decision-making systems where internal processes for fact-checking, source selection, and error correction are hidden from users. 

Musk’s framing of Grokipedia as a remedy to “ideological capture” in traditional knowledge repositories fostered a product culture prioritising rapid scaling and ideological positioning over robust verification or transparency. 

Accountability mechanisms common to Wikipedia - such as community editing and public oversight - were either absent or replaced by poorly explained AI “fact-checks”, leaving no clear route to challenge or correct misinformation.