this post was submitted on 26 Nov 2025
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Elon Musk Had Grok Rewrite Wikipedia. It Calls Hitler “The Führer.” (theintercept.com)
submitted 1 week ago by tonytins@pawb.social to c/technology@lemmy.world
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In late October, Elon Musk released a Wikipedia alternative, with pages written by his AI chatbot Grok. Unlike its nearly quarter-century-old namesake, Musk said Grokipedia would strip out the “woke” from Wikipedia, which he previously described as an “extension of legacy media propaganda.” But while Musk’s Grokipedia, in his eyes, is propaganda-free, it seems to have a proclivity toward right-wing hagiography.

Take Grokipedia’s entry on Adolf Hitler. Until earlier this month, the entry read, “Adolf Hitler was the Austrian-born Führer of Germany from 1933 to 1945.” That phrase has been edited to “Adolf Hitler was an Austrian-born German politician and dictator,” but Grok still refers to Hitler by his honorific one clause later, writing that Hitler served as “Führer und Reichskanzler from August 1934 until his suicide in 1945.” NBC News also pointed out that the page on Hitler goes on for some 13,000 words before the first mention of the Holocaust.

Archive: http://archive.today/aEcz0

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[–] ernest314@lemmy.zip 2 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (10 children)

... idk, if Wikipedia is pissing off Deepak Chopra, I'm pretty sure that's a good thing...

edit: I think my downvote probably warrants a less flippant explanation. In the past decade, Wikipedia has started explicitly labeling pseudoscience and "alternative medicine" as such, as opposed to their original policy of being so "neutral" they would say things like "some people think this is bogus, but some people think not". This has, understandably, pissed those people off, and I suppose in some sense they are right? But in this era of widespread and accelerated sanewashing, I think saying these (true!) things does matter, and the people getting pissed off are really just telling on themselves. I would invite you to read the Wikipedia articles on the quoted public figures for yourself, and verify that they really were slandered the way they describe.

tangentially-related Hank Green video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9zi0ogvPfCA

[–] softwarist@programming.dev 1 points 1 week ago (9 children)

I should have specified: I don't agree with every part of the article, but I shared it for this excerpt:

The Wikimedia Foundation solicits donations from Wikipedia users every year, even though its expenses ($2 million to run hosting and servers) are vanishingly small compared to its profits. Wikimedia has increased its spending over 1000% since 2008 and sits on $97.6 million in assets as of 2016.

[–] mojofrododojo@lemmy.world 1 points 1 week ago (6 children)

so you're judging their costs and balances based on ten year old data? and acting like times haven't changed enormously in that decade?

I know the amount of bandwidth AI's are using to scrape wikipedia is itself an onus:

https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2025/04/ai-bots-strain-wikimedia-as-bandwidth-surges-50/

https://nymag.com/intelligencer/article/wikipedia-contributors-are-worried-about-ai-scraping.html

https://thecoremachine.com/technology/wikipedia-vs-ai-traffic-holding-steady-but-scrapers-are-draining-its-resources/

[–] softwarist@programming.dev 1 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Here is their FY 24–25 Audit Report. To wit, their net assets were $296.6 million, while their total internet hosting expenses were $3.5 million. So the claim that hosting expenses make up a trivial fraction of their total assets would appear to hold true even moreso today than a decade ago.

Granted, the FAQs for the report state that "The vast majority of […] revenue came from donations […], as well as investment income, Wikimedia Enterprise revenue, and other revenue primarily related to a cost sharing agreement with the Wikimedia Endowment".

I remain suspicious of the large increases in "Salaries and wages" year-over-year compared to other expense categories.

[–] mojofrododojo@lemmy.world 1 points 1 week ago (1 children)

cool, you do you. don't donate and continue to use it like a parasite lol

[–] softwarist@programming.dev 1 points 1 week ago (1 children)

I prefer the term "commensalist"

[–] mojofrododojo@lemmy.world 1 points 6 days ago (1 children)

commensalist

sure thing parasite. no, actually you're worse than a parasite, you're actively discouraging people from doing the right thing.

you're an asshole lol

[–] softwarist@programming.dev 1 points 6 days ago (1 children)

I think I can live with that

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