Elon Musk's Grokipedia Pushes Far-Right Talking Points
www.wired.com
The new AI-powered Wikipedia competitor falsely claims that pornography worsened the AIDS epidemic and that social media may be fueling a rise in transgender people.

The new AI-powered Wikipedia competitor falsely claims that pornography worsened the AIDS epidemic and that social media may be fueling a rise in transgender people.

On Monday, Elon Musk’s xAI startup launched Grokipedia, which the billionaire is pitching as an AI-generated alternative to the crowdsourced encyclopedia Wikipedia.

When we finally got access to it, WIRED found that the online encyclopedia contained lengthy entries generated by AI. While many of the pages WIRED saw on launch day appeared fairly similar to Wikipedia in terms of tone and content, a number of notable Grokipedia entries denounced the mainstream media, highlighted conservative viewpoints, and sometimes perpetuated historical inaccuracies.

The Grokipedia entry about the slavery of African Americans in the US includes a section outlining numerous “ideological justifications” made for slavery, including the “Shift from Necessary Evil to Positive Good.” The end of the entry focuses on criticisms of The 1619 Project, which it says incorrectly framed “slavery as the central engine of the nation’s political, economic, and cultural development.”

  • ThePantser@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
    45·
    2 days ago

    falsely claims that pornography worsened the AIDS epidemic

    Porn? That thing people usually watch while self pleasuring themselves? You gotta be really dumb to rationalize that.

  • ReallyActuallyFrankenstein@lemmynsfw.comEnglish
    321·
    2 days ago

    Obviously the project is idiotic and hopefully as doomed as it now appears. But more interesting is what it reveals about Musk:

    It seems Musk may have a grander plan than being a 90s edgelord troll. It’s looking like Grok is actually intended to be an all-purpose fascist translation layer and reality filter.

    Compare this to the censors whose job is rewriting history in 1984, to update whether Oceania has always been at war with Eurasia. Based on reports, I wouldn’t be surprised if this is Grok just running with a variation of the prompt, “copy Wikipedia, but edit each article and history to align with conservative beliefs.” It may really be that simple and stupid. But thinking of Grok as 1984’s censor makes a lot of sense.

    Twitter is the real-time arm of that, with Musk clearly directing it to inject right-wing distortion into the shared mass reality. This attempt to falsify history is the companion.