MC EXCLUSIVE AI Summit: I don’t know anyone who uses Grokipedia, it will never work, says Jimmy Wales

Jimmy Wales, Co-Founder, The Wikimedia Foundation

Wikipedia co-founder Jimmy Wales dismissed Grokipedia, Elon Musk’s AI-powered encyclopedia, as unviable and criticized its lack of fact-checking and attribution. Wales defended Wikipedia’s neutrality and crowd-sourced model against Musk’s claims of bias.

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There is no competition between Wikipedia and Grokipedia, and I don’t know of anyone who uses the AI-generated online encyclopaedia, Wikipedia Co-Founder Jimmy wales told Moneycontrol in an exclusive interview on Wednesday.

"I think it’s a ridiculous idea (Grokipedia), and it will never work," said Wales on the sidelines of the India AI Impact Summit 2026.

Grokipedia was launched in October 2025 by xAI Founder Elon Musk. Musk had called Grokipedia an alternative to "biased" and "woke" Wikipedia. Over the years, Musk has referred Wikipedia as “Wokipedia,” discouraged donations to the platform, and questioned its editorial neutrality.

Grokipedia is an AI-managed knowledge platform that aims to function as a real-time alternative to Wikipedia. While both systems exist to document knowledge on the web, they differ radically in how they create, govern, update, and position information. For instance, the Grokipedia is AI-powered while the Wikipedia relies in crowd-sourced information and data.

Watch the full interview here.

One of the central points of divergence is speed. Grokipedia intends to update entries in near-real time, especially during breaking events. Wikipedia, by design, prioritises verifiable sourcing, which introduces a delay when factual checks and human dispute resolution are necessary

"One of Wikipedia’s core values in neutrality. The idea that we are 'Wokepedia' is not true," Wales told Moneycontrol.

"All of the AI is trained of Wikipedia data. We believe attribution is an ethical responsibility, and many times, it’s a legal requirement. AI has not been very good at that," said Wales.

"AI doesn’t understand what’s real and not real. We (Wikipedia) are very particular about fact checking. Journalism has become more important than ever before…Building up trust in information is hugely important," said Wales.

Wikipedia is run by a non-profit entity, the Wikimedia Foundation, with a public editing trail and community moderation. Grokipedia is a for-profit xAI product with control centralised inside the model and its training data.

Musk and xAI have publicly framed Grokipedia as a response to what they claim is ideological skew on Wikipedia. Wikipedia, in contrast, defends its neutrality model (NPOV) with transparent sourcing rules and bans on original research.