Key Findings
- Elon Musk’s Grokipedia cites the neo-Nazi forum Stormfront 42 times.
- It also uses Infowars 34 times and the white nationalist site VDare 107 times.
- Cornell researchers found over 12,500 citations to sources deemed very low-credibility.
- Grokipedia cites such domains three times more often than Wikipedia.
A new study from Cornell University reveals that Elon Musk’s recently launched online encyclopedia, Grokipedia, frequently cites extremist and unreliable sources, including the neo-Nazi forum Stormfront.
The analysis found 42 citations to Stormfront, 34 to the conspiracy site Infowars, and 107 to the white nationalist website VDare. In total, Grokipedia includes 12,522 citations to sources previous academic research has flagged as having very low credibility.
“The guardrails are off,” said Harold Triedman, a co-author of the study and a former senior privacy engineer for the Wikimedia Foundation. “The publicly determined, community-oriented rules that try to maintain Wikipedia as a comprehensive, reliable, human-generated source are not in application on Grokipedia.”
How Grokipedia’s Editing Differs
Unlike Wikipedia’s volunteer-led model, Grokipedia’s editing is centralized under Musk’s AI company, xAI. User-submitted edits are approved or denied with “Grok Feedback,” suggesting the Grok AI chatbot plays a key role. The process lacks transparency.
Examples of Problematic Sourcing
The study highlights specific articles where Grokipedia’s sourcing diverges sharply from Wikipedia’s standards:
- White Nationalist Publication: The Grokipedia article cites Stormfront seven times, uses euphemistic language, and is about 15 times longer than Wikipedia’s version, which cites mainstream sources like Newsweek.
- Film ‘American History X’: Grokipedia cites Stormfront six times to summarize forum users’ views, while Wikipedia uses movie websites and news publications.
- Adolf Hitler: The Grokipedia entry runs for 13,000 words before naming the Holocaust, which Wikipedia mentions in its first paragraph.
Background on Sources and Musk’s Stance
Stormfront, created by a former KKK leader, is a notorious neo-Nazi hub. Infowars is generally prohibited on Wikipedia, and its founder faces a $1.5 billion defamation judgment. VDare is also typically banned.
Musk and xAI did not respond to comment requests. xAI’s media inquiry auto-reply states: “Legacy Media Lies.”
Musk has a history of promoting antisemitic and racist theories, and his platform X has become a hub for neo-Nazi influencers after he restored banned accounts. He created Grokipedia as a political project, criticizing Wikipedia as “too left-wing.”
Study Methodology and Limitations
The Cornell researchers scraped nearly all of Grokipedia’s 883,000 articles in late October for this first comprehensive analysis. The paper is a preprint, not yet peer-reviewed, but NBC News verified some findings.
About 5.5% of Grokipedia articles contain at least one citation to a source blacklisted by Wikipedia’s English-language community. The researchers also found 1,050 instances where Grokipedia cites its own source: public conversations between X users and the Grok chatbot.
“We believe there is much future work to complete in this area,” the researchers concluded.
