Wikipedia co-founder Jimmy Wales has criticized Elon Musk’s newly launched “Grokipedia,” warning that the AI-driven encyclopedia will spread misinformation due to flaws in large language models (LLMs).
Speaking at the CNBC Technology Executive Council Summit in New York on Tuesday, Wales said, “The LLMs he’s using to write it are going to make massive errors. We know ChatGPT and all the other LLMs are not good enough to write wiki entries.”
Musk launched Grokipedia last week as an AI-powered alternative to Wikipedia, claiming it would “exceed Wikipedia by several orders of magnitude in breadth, depth, and accuracy.” Wales, however, dismissed those claims, saying Musk misunderstands how reliable knowledge is built. “His complaints about Wikipedia being ‘woke’ are misplaced. We focus on mainstream, verifiable sources — not random conspiracy theories — and that’s what keeps Wikipedia credible,” he said.
Wales noted that Wikipedia spends about $175 million annually on technology, compared to the tens of billions of dollars tech giants are investing in AI. He also cautioned that AI research tools — including those from OpenAI, Perplexity, and Google — often hallucinate or generate false citations, which could be dangerous if used for academic or factual purposes.
He cited a recent case where a German researcher found fabricated references generated by ChatGPT, calling the situation “a mess.” Wales said the incident underscores the need for Wikipedia to “double down on neutrality and reliability” rather than chasing AI hype.
While acknowledging that Wikipedia is experimenting with limited AI tools to improve content discovery, Wales said developing its own LLM is not currently feasible due to high costs. He also confirmed that the Wikimedia Foundation is tightening its rules on how third parties access and use its data, after detecting bot traffic disguised as human users — much of it linked to AI training activities.
Wales concluded that Wikipedia’s mission remains unchanged: “We shouldn’t be ‘Wokepedia.’ We should be the internet’s most trusted neutral source — and that’s exactly what people expect from us.”
