Elon Musk confirms Grokipedia name is temporary, plans to rebrand Wikipedia rival to…

Elon Musk has confirmed that the name Grokipedia is a temporary one that his company has assigned to its AI-powered Wikipedia rival. Notably, xAI launched the AI-generated encyclopedia last month with the aim of achieving “truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth.”

Just weeks after the initial launch of Grokipedia, Musk confirmed that a name change for the platform is coming in the future. Writing in a post on X (formerly Twitter), Musk said, “When Grokipedia is good enough (long way to go), we will change the name to Encyclopedia Galactica. It will be an open-source distillation of all knowledge, including audio, images and video. Join @xAI to help build the sci-fi version of the Library of Alexandria!”

Musk also went on to join Grokipedia in his mission of taking the human race to Mars and beyond. He added, “Copies will be etched in stone and sent to the Moon, Mars and beyond. This time, it will not be lost.”

With the renaming effort, Musk is once again highlighting his love for science fiction. The Encyclopedia Galactica is a fictional, galaxy-spanning reference book introduced in Isaac Asimov’s Foundation series. Musk has previously praised Asimov multiple times and even credited the author with shaping his thinking about civilisation, technology and humanity’s long-term survival.

A user on X, perhaps already familiar with Musk’s love for The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, asked the billionaire to change the name of Grokipedia to the famous science-fiction novel franchise by Douglas Adams. Musk responded, “maybe we should.”

Even Musk’s Grok AI chatbot takes its personality reference from The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. The company said in its announcement post for Grok that the chatbot is intended to “answer questions with a bit of wit and has a rebellious streak”, similar to the fictional guide in the novel.

What is Grokipedia?

The AI-powered encyclopedia runs on the power of Grok, the chatbot developed by Musk’s xAI. Unlike Wikipedia, Grokipedia articles are not written by human editors; instead, the Grok large language model (LLM) “fact checks” the information on these pages, and users cannot make any direct edits to them.

Soon after the Grokipedia launch, however, many users pointed out that much of the content on the platform was nearly verbatim copied from Wikipedia.

Moreover, despite Musk’s stated goal of creating a bias-free platform, many users criticised Grokipedia for promoting right-wing viewpoints.