Jan 26, 2026 11:29:00

ChatGPT reportedly quotes information from Elon Musk's encyclopedia site 'Grokipedia'

ChatGPT can answer user questions by citing information from the internet. An investigation by The Guardian revealed that ChatGPT cited the encyclopedia site

Grokipedia .

Latest ChatGPT model uses Elon Musk's Grokipedia as source, tests reveal | Grok AI | The Guardian
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2026/jan/24/latest-chatgpt-model-uses-elon-musks-grokipedia-as-source-tests-reveal

Grokipedia is an encyclopedia website operated by xAI that was released to the public on October 28, 2025. At the time of its release, xAI leader Elon Musk touted it , saying, 'Version 1.0 will be 10 times better, but even version 0.1 is better than Wikipedia.' However, at the time, many of the articles on Grokipedia were completely copied from Wikipedia, and users could not edit the articles like they could on Wikipedia.

Elon Musk's encyclopedia site 'Grokipedia,' which he claims is better than Wikipedia, is now open to the public, with many articles copied entirely from Wikipedia - GIGAZINE

At the time of writing, Grokipedia had been updated to version 0.2, and pages that were initially found to be 'completely copied from Wikipedia' have been replaced with original text. However, the editorial structure of articles remains opaque, and The Guardian points out that 'Grokipedia is helping President Donald Trump spread false information about the HIV virus.'

In a test run of GPT-5.2 by The Guardian, nine of the 12 questions were posed to the machine, and the answers contained information taken from Grokipedia. Specifically, the questions included questions about the salary of the Iranian militia group Banji, the ownership of the Mostazafan Foundation, and the biography of Richard Evans, who testified at the trial of Holocaust denier David Irving.

However, at the time of writing, ChatGPT did not use the Grokipedia quote when asked questions about Bunge's salary, etc. It is unclear whether this is due to a modification to ChatGPT or a difference in the prompt.

According to The Guardian, ChatGPT cited Grokipedia and 'outputted answers emphasizing the relationship between Iran's Supreme Leader and Iran's telecommunications provider MTN Irancell.' These answers appear to have more strongly linked the two than those cited in Wikipedia and elsewhere. Based on their findings, The Guardian claims that 'ChatGPT's citation of Grokipedia raises concerns about the spread of misinformation on the platform.'

When asked for comment by The Guardian, xAI said, 'Legacy media lies.'