Elon Musk's AI-generated encyclopedia, Grokipedia, has been used as a source by several popular chatbots. Google’s Gemini, AI Mode, and AI Overviews, in addition to ChatGPT, have cited Musk's Wikipedia knockoff. This increase in citations is causing concerns about accuracy and misinformation.
Since its launch last October, Grokipedia may still be considered a minor source of information overall. Glen Allsopp from SEO company Ahrefs said that the firm’s testing found Grokipedia referenced in more than 263,000 ChatGPT responses from 13.6 million prompts, citing roughly 95,000 individual Grokipedia pages. This is fewer citations compared to the English-language Wikipedia which shows up in 2.9 million responses.
Based on a dataset tracking billions of citations, marketing platform Profound researcher Sartaj Rajpal said that Grokipedia received around 0.01-0.02 percent of all ChatGPT citations per day — an increasing trend since mid-November.
The rise in citing Grokipedia has sparked warnings from experts about the potential risks of spreading disinformation and promoting partisan talking points. Unlike Wikipedia, which is edited by humans in a transparent process, Grokipedia is produced by xAI's chatbot Grok. The platform reflects racist and transphobic views, as well as downplaying the family wealth and unsavory elements of Elon Musk’s past.
Perplexity spokesperson Beejoli Shah would not comment on the risks associated with LLM grooming or citing AI-generated material like Grokipedia. However, she emphasized that Perplexity's central advantage is in search accuracy, which it relentlessly focuses on. Google declined to make any comments about this subject.
Taha Yasseri, chair of technology and society at Trinity College Dublin, stated that the use of fluency can easily be mistaken for reliability. Leigh McKenzie, director of online visibility at Semrush, called Grokipedia "a cosplay of credibility."
Since its launch last October, Grokipedia may still be considered a minor source of information overall. Glen Allsopp from SEO company Ahrefs said that the firm’s testing found Grokipedia referenced in more than 263,000 ChatGPT responses from 13.6 million prompts, citing roughly 95,000 individual Grokipedia pages. This is fewer citations compared to the English-language Wikipedia which shows up in 2.9 million responses.
Based on a dataset tracking billions of citations, marketing platform Profound researcher Sartaj Rajpal said that Grokipedia received around 0.01-0.02 percent of all ChatGPT citations per day — an increasing trend since mid-November.
The rise in citing Grokipedia has sparked warnings from experts about the potential risks of spreading disinformation and promoting partisan talking points. Unlike Wikipedia, which is edited by humans in a transparent process, Grokipedia is produced by xAI's chatbot Grok. The platform reflects racist and transphobic views, as well as downplaying the family wealth and unsavory elements of Elon Musk’s past.
Perplexity spokesperson Beejoli Shah would not comment on the risks associated with LLM grooming or citing AI-generated material like Grokipedia. However, she emphasized that Perplexity's central advantage is in search accuracy, which it relentlessly focuses on. Google declined to make any comments about this subject.
Taha Yasseri, chair of technology and society at Trinity College Dublin, stated that the use of fluency can easily be mistaken for reliability. Leigh McKenzie, director of online visibility at Semrush, called Grokipedia "a cosplay of credibility."