Responding to reports of falsehoods in his newly launched Grokipedia project, billionaire Elon Musk concocted a nonsensical conspiracy theory to deflect attention from his latest failure.
On Monday, Musk launched Grokipedia, an encyclopedia-style website written by artificial intelligence. And mere hours later, Wired’s review of the site’s content found multiple entries rife with falsehoods and disinformation.
For instance, the entry on slavery in the U.S. outlines “ideological justifications” for the practice and denies that slavery played a key economic role in the development of the nation. In reality, free labor from enslaved people built the economic power of the United States.
The site also furthers several right-wing views.
The site pushes the lie that the spread of pornography in the 1980s worsened to the HIV/AIDS crisis, according to Wired. And the entry on “transgender” also echoes Musk’s bigotry against transgender people, referring to transgender women as “biological males.”
The Guardian’s review of Grokipedia noted the site’s entries “appear to hew closely to conservative talking points,” noting the entry on the Jan. 6, 2021 attack on the Capitol falsely cites “widespread claims of voting irregularities.”
Demonstrators protest against Elon Musk and Department of Government Efficiency cuts outside a Tesla dealership in Kansas City, Missouri, on April 12.
In response to the articles, Musk didn’t appear to correct his site’s misinformation but instead invented a conspiracy.
“Wired, The Atlantic, Guardian and many other propaganda legacy publications would die immediately if they had to support themselves. Donations from far left organizations disguised as charities are what keep them alive,” he wrote. “They serve simply as a means of influencing Wikipedia, Google, etc as fake ‘authoritative’ sources.”
This lie aligns with conspiracies that Musk has repeatedly spread to deflect from his failings. It is the same technique Musk used years ago when he called a man who criticized his plans for a rescue vehicle a “pedo guy” with no evidence for such an incendiary claim.
Similar to Grokipedia, Musk’s other tech ventures often do not work or produce embarrassing failures. For instance, in July, the AI chatbot he deployed on X suddenly began calling itself “MechaHitler” and spouted antisemitic conspiracy theories. And last year, Musk hosted a chat with Trump on X, and when the site continually crashed, he blamed hackers.
When his sites aren’t glitching out, he has used the tech to create skin-crawling cyber-girlfriends for his biggest fans.
Despite all Musk’s failures and history of pushing bigoted rhetoric and conspiracies—or because of them—President Donald Trump picked Musk to lead the DOGE project at the start of his new presidency. The result? Billions of tax dollars wasted and investors souring on Musk’s car company Tesla as the public turned against him.
The richest man in the world loves a good conspiracy, certainly more than admitting he made a mistake.
