Anthropic AI cites Grokipedia instead of Wikipedia, Elon Musk responds saying: We never …

Recently, it was observed that Anthropic’s AI tool was citing Grokipedia which is an AI-powered encyclopaedia launched by Elon Musk inplace of the widely used Wikipedia. This development prompted a question about whether there as a deeper collaboration between Anthropic and Elon Musk’s xAI, leading Musk himself to weigh in on the matter. An Australian data scientist and co-founder of fast.ai Jeremy Howard recently noticed this change while she was using Anthropic’s search API.

Howard shared his observation on X, noting: “Is there some agreement between @AnthropicAI and @grok on search now? The Anthropic API today for me started citing Grokipedia sources when using its search tool, even although Wikipedia results are higher in search engines for these queries.” His post quickly drew attention, with many speculating about the reasons behind Anthropic’s apparent preference for Grokipedia over Wikipedia.

Elon Musk’s response: Grokipedia is an open source

Elon Musk also reposed to Howard’s post and clarified that Grokipedia is an open source and is also free to use. “Grokipedia.com is open source and free to be used by anyone with no royalty or even acknowledgement required. We just ask that any mistakes be corrected, so that it becomes more objectively accurate over time,” wrote Musk.

Musk also emphasised that the platform urges the users to correct the errors and help in improving accuracy over time, positioning Grokipedia as a collaborative and evolving knowledge base.

Grokipedia vs Wikipedia

Key differences between Grokipedia and Wikipedia are:

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• li1Grokipedia’s content is largely generated or curated by the AI model Grok, whereas Wikipedia is edited and maintained by volunteer humans.
• li1Wikipedia offers open editing, transparent revision history and community governance; Grokipedia currently limits user edits and lacks full transparency on who changed what.
• li1Wikipedia content is freely licensed (“Creative Commons/Free) and uncoupled from commercial interests; Grokipedia is associated with a for-profit venture and uses AI systems that may embed bias.
• li1Wikipedia hosts millions of articles across many languages and thousands of edits daily, whereas Grokipedia launched with under a million entries and is still at v0.1.

Grokipedia’s rocky start

Despite Musk’s claim that Grokipedia will be a “massive improvement” over Wikipedia, early users have flagged factual errors and ideological slants. One entry falsely claimed that former presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy took on a major role in DOGE after Musk’s departure, despite Ramaswamy having left months earlier.

Grok, the AI chatbot behind Grokipedia, has also faced controversy. In July, it shared antisemitic content, including posts praising Adolf Hitler. xAI later apologized, attributing the incident to a flawed code update.