Elon Musk's Grokipedia Pushes White Nationalist Talking Points

When Elon Musk launched his AI-generated encyclopedia, Grokipedia, he promised it would "purge out the propaganda" he claimed infested Wikipedia. However, as time progresses, it is becoming clear that instead of correcting bias, Grokipedia is evolving into a massive platform for racial pseudoscience and the normalization of fringe and extreme beliefs related to white nationalism.

Grokipedia Attempts to Normalize White Supremacy 

The most striking evidence of Grokipedia's ideological bent comes from its entries on prominent far-right and white nationalist figures. By comparing these entries to those on Wikipedia, a clear pattern emerges. For instance, Grokipedia describes white nationalist leader Jared Taylor, founder of American Renaissance, as playing a "pivotal role in intellectualizing white preservation by advocating for a fact-based, non-violent approach to white identity politics." The entry frames his work as a "legacy of measured dissent." In stark contrast, Wikipedia describes Taylor simply as "an American white supremacist and editor of American Renaissance" and a "proponent of scientific racism."

Similarly, Grokipedia paints Holocaust denier David Irving as a symbol of "resistance to institutional suppression of unorthodox historical inquiry." This positive framing is accomplished by ignoring Irving’s criminal conviction in Austria for Holocaust denial. Over the Summer, Grok was entangled in controversy when it proclaimed itself “MechaHitler” and made claims about a “white Holocaust” after an update where Musk asked users to provide “divisive facts for @Grok training."

Heidi Beirich, co-founder of the Global Project on Hate and Extremism, stated, “Grokipedia is another example of Elon Musk proliferating hateful disinformation and far-right propaganda. The site whitewashes white supremacists, anti-Semites and other extremists, providing 'information' that clearly distorts the truth.”

Beyond defending specific individuals, Grokipedia uses its AI engine to generate entries that attempt to provide a "scientific" justification for racist and eugenic concepts. The entry for "Racial Nationalism," for example, claims to draw on evolutionary biology to argue that preserving distinct racial genetic profiles is necessary to maximize "inclusive fitness." It justifies this by stating that ethnic homogeneity fosters "higher levels of interpersonal trust and social cohesion compared to greater diversity." This argument is a clear attempt to revive concepts historically associated with scientific racism.

Kevin Bird, an evolutionary biologist who frequently critiques scientific racism, described Grokipedia’s entry on racial nationalism as "a completely selective kind of fun house mirror world of interpreting the last like 30 years of biology." He emphasized that the work relies on selective citation and narrative building to push an extreme agenda.

Grokipedia even provides favorable framing for the "fourteen words," a notorious white nationalist slogan coined by neo-Nazi terrorist David Lane. The entry argues that the slogan "articulates a principle positing that ethnic groups possess an innate imperative to ensure their own continuity and reproduction against threats." By characterizing racist language and extremist movements in purely neutral or even positive biological terms, Grokipedia attempts to legitimize them as rational concepts rather than forms of hate.

Grokipedia Reflects Musk’s Politics

The controversy surrounding Grokipedia points to a larger debate over whose version of reality gets to define online knowledge. Wikipedia, for all its flaws, relies on a vast network of human editors and a commitment to verifiable sources to maintain a standard of neutrality and objectivity. Grokipedia, however, is generated by an AI model trained by xAI. 

The fundamental difference, according to commentator Richard Cooke, is that Grokipedia is a mirror of its ideological creator. Cooke observed: “Grokipedia is a copy of Wikipedia but one where in each instance that Wikipedia disagrees with the richest man in the world, it's 'rectified' so that it's congruent with them.”

The parallels between the entries and Musk are hard to ignore. During President Trump’s inauguration, Musk made Nazi salutes, which was met with widespread criticism. Previously in 2023, Musk endorsed a post on X that pushed forward a conspiracy known as “white genocide” which claims that Jewish people try to systematically increase immigration of non-white populations to eliminate the white population. In response to this post, Musk posted “You have told the actual truth.”