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Musk created Grokipedia to counter bias, but it’s full of antisemitic and racist dog-whistles
Grokipedia, Elon Musk’s new online encyclopedia built by artificial intelligence, looks a lot like Wikipedia. It has similar formatting. Many of its entries are divided into the same subsections, and much of the information is the same. But when you read the entries, particularly on topics Musk has been particularly critical of, Grokipedia tells a different story.
When Grokipedia launched on Monday, its entry on Adolf Hitler did not mention the Holocaust or Jews in the opening paragraph, simply calling Hitler an “Austrian-born German politician” who seized control of the German government “through legal means and subsequent purges.” The introduction to Hitler’s entry on Wikipedia, on the other hand, identifies him as one of the main perpetrators of the Holocaust, which it defines as the “genocide of six million Jews and millions of other victims.”
Grokipedia’s Hitler entry was updated by the end of the week to mention the Holocaust in the top paragraph as one of the main outcomes of Hitler’s regime. But the information it prioritized in the original opening was not false — all of it was factual. Nevertheless, it missed the point; Hitler is not notable for being a German politician, he is notable for starting World War II and the Holocaust.
Facts are facts. But the context — the introduction, the order in which the facts are delivered, the words used to convey them — matters nearly as much as the information itself.
Musk has accused Wikipedia of bias, calling it “Wokepedia.” (Wikipedia does not consider some right-wing media outlets to be reliable sources, or allow them to be cited in its articles.) Grokipedia is, instead, built by an AI model that relies on information from viral social media posts as well as information from purportedly neutral sources such as newspapers or academic research. Even Grok, the AI chatbot built into X, said Wikipedia was more reliable than its namesake encyclopedia.
The original Hitler entry did go on to mention the Holocaust, but only after noting that, “under Hitler’s leadership, Nazi Germany achieved rapid economic recovery from the Great Depression,” ensuring that whatever good the Nazi leader did was emphasized before his evils.
None of this is surprising; Musk adjusted Grok to answer in lockstep with his personal beliefs. The New York Times found that, after a user tweeted at Musk complaining that Grok had identified the “biggest threat to Western civilization” as being “misinformation and disinformation,” the CEO tweaked the bot. The next day, Grok said that low fertility rates were the biggest threat; pronatalism is an obsession of Musk’s.
Grokipedia has similar tendencies. Its article on pronatalism has a lengthy “argument in favor” subsection, while the “counterarguments and criticisms” section does not arrive until nearly 4,000 words later, and the section has a habit of undermining the arguments it is outlining by providing evidence to the contrary even as it is explaining criticisms.
Similarly, an entry on apartheid — Musk is South African — describes it as an era of robust economic growth for South Africa, only later noting that the rising economic tide included “stark disparities” between Black and white citizens. The page for Zionism, which Musk supports, blames Arab leaders for causing the majority of the violence in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict; the citation for this statement leads to an article that is in fact critiquing that idea.
Wikipedia’s entries sometimes include similarly controversial statements, but these usually have multiple footnotes referencing academic sources of different backgrounds — say Palestinian historians, Israeli historians and American Jewish historians — to prove that controversial lines in their entries are neutral and factual; these footnotes often include the relevant quote.
Encyclopedia entries are tricky; they’re expected to be comprehensive, detailing criticism and endorsements, which can be hard to do neutrally. It all comes down to framing. On Wikipedia, neutrality is protected by thousands of editors who debate every word, leading to a final version that must be widely acceptable. Grokipedia has no such mediating force; only Musk and his team can decide where neutrality lies.
For now, Grokipedia’s bias is mitigated by the very thing that causes it: the lack of human editors. Many of its articles are thousands of words longer than Wikipedia’s. Who’s going to read all that?
The post Musk created Grokipedia to counter bias, but it’s full of antisemitic and racist dog-whistles appeared first on The Forward.
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Lindsey Graham urges Israel not to strike Iranian oil depots even as he says he helped make war happen
(JTA) — Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina has called on Israel to rein in its attacks on Iranian oil infrastructure, marking a rare note of caution from a Republican lawmaker who has said he helped push the United States to join Israel in waging war against Iran.
In a post on X on Sunday, Graham praised Israel for its role in the war before adding that “there will be a day soon that the Iranian people will be in charge of their own fate, not the murderous ayatollah’s regime.”
“In that regard, please be cautious about what targets you select,” continued Graham. “Our goal is to liberate the Iranian people in a fashion that does not cripple their chance to start a new and better life when this regime collapses. The oil economy of Iran will be essential to that endeavor.”
Graham’s post linked to an Axios article that reported that the United States was alarmed by Israeli strikes over the weekend that targeted 30 Iranian fuel depots. On Monday, U.S. gas prices rose to their highest levels since 2024.
The warning from Graham, an ally of President Donald Trump and staunch supporter of Israel, comes days after the Republican hawk told the Wall Street Journal that he had played a key role in urging Trump to strike Iran.
Prior to the joint U.S.-Israeli strikes on Iran, Graham made several trips to Israel where he met with members of the Mossad, Israel’s intelligence agency, as well as Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu whom he said he coached on how to lobby Trump to strike Iran.
“They’ll tell me things our own government won’t tell me,” Graham told the newspaper.
On Monday, Graham also directed his criticism at Saudi Arabia’s decision to stay on the sidelines of the campaign against Iran.
“It is my understanding the Kingdom refuses to use their capable military as a part of an effort to end the barbaric and terrorist Iranian regime who has terrorized the region and killed 7 Americans,” wrote Graham in a post on X Monday. “Question – why should America do a defense agreement with a country like the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia that is unwilling to join a fight of mutual interest?”
The post Lindsey Graham urges Israel not to strike Iranian oil depots even as he says he helped make war happen appeared first on The Forward.
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Belgian officials investigating synagogue explosion as possible act of terrorism
(JTA) — Belgian officials are investigating an explosion in front of a synagogue in Liège early Monday as a possible act of terrorism.
The explosion, which took place at 4 a.m., damaged the door of the historic neo-Romanesque synagogue and blew out the windows of multiple buildings across the street. No injuries were reported.
A range of Belgian politicians, including the prime minister and the mayor of Liège, characterized the explosion as act of antisemitism.
“Antisemitism is an attack on our values and our society, and we must fight it unequivocally,” Prime Minister Bart de Wever said in a statement. “We stand in solidarity with the Jewish community in Liege and across the country.”
The explosion comes amid a surge of concern about possible attacks by agents associated with the Iranian regime, against which the United States and Israel launched a war last week. Iran has a long record of supporting attacks on Jewish targets abroad, including two bombings in the 1990s in Argentina that killed more than 100 people at the Israeli embassy and a Jewish community center. Now, with Iran being pummeled at home, watchdogs are warning that it might lash out through its Iranian Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps Quds Force, responsible for attacks abroad.
Azerbaijan said Friday that it had foiled multiple terror attacks planned by Iranian agents on Jewish sites. In London, four men were arrested last week for allegedly spying on the Jewish community for Iran, with the intent of planning attacks against the community. And a string of shootings at synagogues in Toronto has ignited concern in Canada, too.
Iranian agents have taken aim at non-Jewish targets, too. On Friday, a Pakistani man who prosecutors said had been directed by Iran’s IRGC was convicted of plotting to assassinate President Donald Trump.
The attack in Liège, in the primarily French-speaking Wallonia province, comes amid a range of recent developments that have unsettled Belgian Jews, who number approximately 30,000. They include antisemitic carnival caricatures in the city of Aalst; a ban on ritual slaughter preventing the local production of kosher meat; and an ongoing row between U.S. and Belgian officials over Jewish circumcision practices. The attack also follows a 2014 shooting in which a gunman associated with the Islamic State, a rival to Iran’s Islamic Republic, shot four people to death at the Jewish Museum in Brussels.
A spokesperson for the Liège police described the effects to the area as “only material damage” to the 1899 building. Rabbi Joshua Nejman told local media that he was hoping that security footage would reveal the perpetrator.
“I’m going to try to calm my heart, because it is beating faster and faster this morning,” said Nejman, who said he had been at the synagogue for 25 years.
“Liege is home to a very small but vibrant Jewish community where I personally grew up,” Eitan Bergman, vice president of the Coordinating Committee of Jewish Organisations in Belgium, told Reuters. “Today, the feelings among our community members are a mixture of sadness, worry and profound shock.”
Liege’s mayor, Willy Demeyer, praised the synagogue community to RBTF, Belgium’s French-language national broadcaster. He added, “We cannot allow foreign conflicts to be imported into our city.”
The post Belgian officials investigating synagogue explosion as possible act of terrorism appeared first on The Forward.
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The Top 100 People Positively Influencing Jewish Life, 2025
In honor of The Algemeiner‘s 12th annual gala, we are proud to present our “J100” list — 100 individuals who have positively influenced Jewish life over the past year.