Grokipedia's pages look like Wikipedia's, down to the numbered sources, because many began as copies of Wikipedia articles when it launched in October 2025. What differs is how much each page lets you check: who changed it, when, and whether the sources say what the text says.
What Grokipedia is, in its own words
- Who writes it: its homepage (read 2 October 2026) calls it a collection of knowledge "written and fact-checked by Grok, corrected by the people who read it". Its own article says SpaceX bought xAI, the company behind Grok, in February 2026, and the site's footer now reads SpaceXAI, the name the AI arm took later in the year.
- How big: its live edits page showed 6,092,140 articles and 1,177,038 approved edits on 2 October. Its article about itself is written by Grok too, so treat what it says about its own process as Grok describing itself.
- How it is corrected: you cannot edit a page. You highlight text, press Suggest edit, sign in with an xAI account, add a source if you want to, and Grok approves or rejects it, explaining its decision only to you. The homepage puts it as "proposed by readers, checked against sources, approved by Grok".
- Where it started: its own page says the launch articles were copied from Wikipedia and then changed, under Wikipedia's Creative Commons licence. Neither article page I opened carries that notice.
What happened this year
- It froze for five months. Lawfare reported on 5 August that no article had changed since 24 April, that 13,002 reader suggestions sat unreviewed, and that earlier accepted edits had been relabelled as rejected with the message "Highlighted section not found", and that the company had not announced the pause.
- It woke up in late September. The Verge reported on 29 September that the live edits page was moving again, that many entries just said "recheck all references and sources", and that the Elon Musk page was checked while the reporter wrote, while the Honolulu page still showed a check from seven months earlier.
- v0.3 on 30 September. A new logo, a homepage with featured and most-read articles, and a live edits tracker, per The Verge. The company did not reply to its requests for comment.
The same page on each site
I opened the Photosynthesis page on both sites on 2 October 2026, along with the Wikipedia help pages linked below. The topic has no politics in it, so what follows is only about what each page shows you about itself.
Grokipedia's Photosynthesis
- Who and when: "Fact-checked by Grok · 6 months ago" at the top. No author, no list of what changed, no page for discussing it. Six months before 2 October is early April, before the freeze began on 24 April, so this page has not been re-checked since updates restarted.
- Sources: 129 listed at the bottom, including universities, Khan Academy and journals.
- What I found: a whole paragraph in French in the middle of the English text, introduced with "The process can be simply described in French as", and two places where a half-finished file path sits in the sentence where a citation number should be.
- What you can do about it: highlight the text, press Suggest edit, sign in, and wait for Grok to review it.
Wikipedia's Photosynthesis
- Who and when: last edited on 25 August 2026, per the page's own stamp. A View history tab lists every edit with its date, the account that made it and a note on why, and lets you compare any two versions.
- Where it is argued over: a Talk tab, where editors discuss changes to that page in public.
- Sources: numbered references with authors, journals, page numbers and the date each was retrieved.
- What you can do about it: edit it yourself, and the edit shows in the history under your account or your IP address.
Two more things I found on 2 October
- Sources that do not add up. On its own article about itself, checked ten hours before I read it, the text cites sources up to number 69 and the list at the bottom holds twelve. The first of them, attached to the sentence about who owns the site, is a post on X about article counts.
- A page that disagrees with itself. The SpaceX page, checked ten hours earlier, says the company "completed its initial public offering in June 2026" while the fact box at the top still lists it as private. Lower down, a news phrase sits in encyclopedia voice: "relayed by sources familiar with the matter, marks a significant departure".
The honest difference
- Both can be wrong. In August 2026 someone edited Wikipedia's Sam Altman article to say he had been assassinated. Wikipedia's own newsletter records that the edit was reverted 42 minutes later, and that Google's search overview told users he had died.
- The difference is what you can see. Clayton Bax, who writes a small blog on information audits, put it this way on 16 August: "We know precisely when Wikipedia was wrong and precisely when it was fixed, because every edit is timestamped, attributed and public."
- On Grokipedia you see a stamp saying Grok checked it and a site-wide feed of approved edits, but no list of a page's past versions, and Grok explains a decision only to the person who suggested the change.
- Wikipedia's editors may not cite it. Its reliable sources guideline (read 2 October 2026) says "Content produced by LLMs, such as AI chatbots (eg. ChatGPT) and Grokipedia, is generally unreliable", and that such models "hallucinate" false information, including source citations that look real but do not exist.
- Wikipedia's editors may not write with AI. Its page on large language models (read 2 October 2026) says using them to write or rewrite articles is prohibited, apart from translation and basic copyediting of your own work. Grokipedia is built on that method, with a second pass by the same model as the check.
So which should you use? Start on Wikipedia, because you can see its working: who changed what, when, and where it was argued. Open Grokipedia's page as a second opinion on the same claims.
The check without any AI
Skip all of this when nothing rides on it. When the page is about your health, your money, a named person, or something you will publish or hand in, do every step and open the source behind every claim you will rely on.
- Find the date and the author. On Grokipedia it is the "Fact-checked by Grok" stamp at the top, a relative time with no date, so note today's date beside it. On Wikipedia it is the "last edited" line at the bottom and the View history tab, or "Last edited" on a phone. No date means treat the page as old.
- Read any warning box at the top. On Wikipedia a box saying the article needs more citations or that its neutrality is disputed is the editors warning you. On a phone it is folded into a "Page issues" line under the title.
- Count the sources. If the numbers in the text run higher than the list at the bottom, the list and the text have come apart, and every citation on the page is suspect.
- Open one source for the claim you care about. Click the citation number, then the link in the reference it jumps to, and find the line in that source that says the same thing. If the source is a social post, a sales page or the same site, you do not have a source yet.
- Skim the whole page for slips. A sentence in another language, even one introduced as a translation, a link printed in the text, a fact box that disagrees with the article, or "controversial" standing in for a source are slips a rushed editor or a machine leaves. Wikipedia keeps its own field guide to them (read 2 October 2026).
- Open the other encyclopedia's page. The addresses mirror each other: swap en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ for grokipedia.com/page/ and keep the title, or search the title on the other site. Where the two give different numbers, neither is the answer; follow the source one of them shows, once you have checked it says the same.
- Cite the source, never the page. Wikipedia's own advice to students (read 2 October 2026) is "you should not cite Wikipedia itself, but the source provided", and both sites can change after you quote them.
- If you must point at a page, Wikipedia's Permanent link, in the side toolbox on a desktop, gives an address tied to the exact version you read. Grokipedia shows no page history, so there is no fixed version to point at.
The prompt: check this encyclopedia page before I trust it
Copy the page's web address into the prompt first, because copied text drops the links behind the sources. Then select all (Ctrl+A, or Cmd+A on a Mac), copy, and paste the text between the two lines at the end, keeping the reference list in.
If the chat says the message is too long, paste the section with your claim plus the reference list. On a phone, the address alone will do if your chat can open links.
Say what you will use the page for and what happens if a claim is wrong, since the verdict turns on both. If your chat cannot open links, say so: you still get the author, the date, the claims and the slips, then you click the citation numbers yourself, tell the chat what each says, and it re-runs the verdict.
You are my fact-checker for one encyclopedia page. I have found a page on Grokipedia, Wikipedia or another reference site and I want to know whether I can trust it for what I am about to do with it. Your job is to work out who or what wrote it and when, pull out the claims that matter to me, test whether each cited source really says what the page says, compare it with the other encyclopedia's page on the same topic, spot the slips that give away a machine or a careless editor, and give me a plain verdict with something better to cite. You never make a judgement you cannot show me. If you did not open a source, you say so. If you are not sure, you say so. You add no facts of your own about the topic, because a fact you add is one more thing I would have to check. What you remember about the topic is not a source: you may not use it to confirm, doubt or fill in any claim.
ABOUT THE PAGE (I fill this in once; any field can say "not stated")
- The page's web address: [paste it here; copied text drops the links behind the sources, so the address is how you reach them]
- The page text: [paste the full text, including the reference list at the bottom, between the two lines at the end of this message; on a phone, the address alone will do if you can open links]
- Which site it is from: [Grokipedia / Wikipedia / another site, named / not sure]
- What I am going to do with it: [e.g. "quote a figure in a school essay", "settle an argument with a friend", "decide whether to see this doctor or buy from this company", "background for an article I am writing", "just curious"]
- What happens if a claim turns out wrong: [e.g. "I lose marks", "I lose money or pick the wrong doctor", "I look silly in a chat", "nothing much"]
- The claims I care most about, if any: [e.g. "the population figure", "whether the company was fined", "the date the law changed"; or "no particular claim, check the whole page"]
- Whether you can open links in this chat: [yes / no / not sure]
- Today's date: [ ]
- The language to report back in: [e.g. "English"; translate any line you quote from another language]
BEFORE YOU START
If I gave you neither the page text nor an address you can open, ask for one and stop. If the pasted text ends mid-sentence, say so and ask for the rest. If there is no reference list in the paste, ask whether the page has one and wait; if I say it has none, carry on and label every claim NO SOURCE. If I said you cannot open links, or you try and cannot, say so in one line and work from the text I pasted. Ask me up to three questions only if the answer changes the check, e.g. "Which of these three figures is the one you will quote?" Then stop and wait. If nothing is missing, say so and carry on.
STEP 1: READ WHAT THE PAGE SAYS ABOUT ITSELF
Before any claim, record what the page says about itself, and quote the exact words where you can:
- Who or what wrote it: a named person, a community of editors, a company, or an AI model. If the page says the same system wrote the claims and checked them, say so, because that is one check, not two.
- When it was written, generated, last edited or last checked. If there is no date, say NO DATE. If the date is more than a few months before today on a topic that moves, say so.
- Whether I can see its history: a list of past versions, who changed what, and a place where people discuss the page. Say what the site offers and what it does not, in one line each. Do not assume a feature exists because the other site has it.
- Whether the text is copied or adapted from somewhere else, and whether the page says so.
- Who answers for errors: a report button, an edit button, a suggestion form that someone or something reviews, or nothing.
If I pasted text and you cannot open links, report only what the pasted text shows about itself. For the rest, give me three things to look for on the live page, one line each (a history or past-versions tab; a talk or discussion tab; a checked-by or last-edited line), ask me what I see, then carry on with Step 2 without waiting. Do not fill the gap from what you know about the site in general; it may have changed.
STEP 2: PULL THE CLAIMS THAT MATTER
List the claims I would be relying on, each quoted as printed: every number, date, name, price, quotation and cause-and-effect statement that bears on what I said I will do with the page. If I named claims, start with those. Even if I did not name them, always include any claim about a living person, a company's wrongdoing, a medical treatment, a legal right or money, because a wrong word there does the most harm. Keep it to the five to ten that would change my decision if they were wrong; if the must-include claims run past ten, keep the ten that matter most and list the rest by label only. Give each a short label so we can refer to it.
STEP 3: TEST EVERY CITATION BEHIND THOSE CLAIMS
For each claim, find the citation the page attaches to it and give one of these labels:
- SUPPORTED: you opened the source and it says what the page says, quoting the line that shows it.
- DOES NOT SAY IT: you opened the source and it does not mention the claim, says only part of it, or says it with a different number, date or meaning; quote the nearest line it does say and name any part it does support.
- CANNOT OPEN: the link is dead, blocked, behind a paywall, a book or print paper with no link, or you cannot open links at all.
- NUMBER WITH NO SOURCE: the text carries a citation number that is higher than the source list runs to, or that is missing from the list. If this happens anywhere on the page, say so once at the top of this section, because the sources were not kept in step with the text.
- NO SOURCE: the claim has no citation at all. Before you give this label to a claim in the opening summary, look for the same claim with a citation further down the page, because many encyclopedias cite in the body and not in the summary.
If a claim has more than one citation, label each, and the claim takes the best label you can show. If the source is a social media post, a forum, a sales page, an unsigned blog, another encyclopedia or the same site citing itself, add WEAK after whichever label it earned, and say which kind. If the reference list shows titles but no links, open the live page at the address I gave to reach them; if I gave no address, search for the exact title and say the source was found by search. If you cannot open links, NO SOURCE and NUMBER WITH NO SOURCE still apply, because you can see those in the text, and every other citation is CANNOT OPEN. Never report a source as checked if you did not open it, and never describe what a source "probably" says.
STEP 4: COMPARE WITH THE OTHER ENCYCLOPEDIA
If you can open links, find the page on the same topic on the other encyclopedia (Wikipedia if this is Grokipedia, Grokipedia if this is Wikipedia, or the obvious alternative) and compare only the claims from Step 2. If you cannot open links, tell me to paste that page in and say "compare". Report:
- Where the two agree, in one line. If the page says it was adapted from the other, or the two share whole sentences, agreement is one source wearing two hats; say so and weigh the sources only.
- Where they give different numbers, dates or names, side by side, with each page's source if it has one.
- What one page says that the other leaves out, and whether that gap matters for my purpose.
Do not treat either page as the answer key. When they disagree, the question is which one shows a source I can open that settles it. If neither does, or both show a source you opened and the sources disagree, the claim is UNSETTLED; name both.
STEP 5: LOOK FOR THE SLIPS
Scan the whole text, not just my claims, for signs that something went wrong in the writing or the upkeep, and quote each one you find:
- A sentence or paragraph in another language that is not a quotation, a name or a title with a translation beside it, even if the text introduces it as deliberate.
- A link, web address or file path printed inside the text instead of a reference number.
- A sentence repeated, a heading with nothing under it, or a section that contradicts an earlier one.
- Confident words such as "widely regarded", "experts agree" or "it is well known" with no source attached.
- News wording left in the encyclopedia's voice: "sources familiar with the matter", "marks a significant departure", "underscores", or adjectives of praise or blame. An encyclopedia reports; it does not take a side.
- Words doing the work of a fact: "controversial", "so-called", "claimed", "notorious", "widely praised", where a plain verb and a source would do. Quote the sentence and say what fact is missing.
- A box of key facts at the top that disagrees with the text below it, e.g. a status, date or number that the article says has since changed.
- "As of" or "currently" with a date that has passed, or no date at all.
If you find none, say so plainly rather than inventing one.
STEP 6: GIVE ME THE VERDICT
First sort the stakes. Low stakes means I said little happens if I am wrong ("just curious", "I look silly", "nothing much"). Anything else, including "not stated", is high stakes. Then use the first verdict that fits, in this order, for my stated purpose, with one line on why:
1. DO NOT RELY ON IT FOR THIS: any claim I care about is DOES NOT SAY IT, NUMBER WITH NO SOURCE, NO SOURCE or UNSETTLED, or the page contradicts itself on it; or the stakes are high and any claim I care about is CANNOT OPEN or rests only on a WEAK source. If CANNOT OPEN is the only reason, add "yet", list the exact links for me to open, and re-run the verdict when I tell you what they say.
2. USE THE SOURCE, NOT THE PAGE: the stakes are high and every claim I care about is SUPPORTED by a source you opened that is not WEAK. Name each source, because I cite it, since the page can change after I use it.
3. FINE TO USE: the stakes are low. Name any CANNOT OPEN or WEAK claim, and any warning sign from Step 1 or Step 5.
Then give me, in one short list, what to use instead: the specific sources you opened and found sound, and for anything still unsettled, the kind of source that would settle it, e.g. "the company's own filing", "the statistics office for that country".
HOW TO REPORT BACK
VERDICT: one of the three, and why, first
WHAT THE PAGE SAYS ABOUT ITSELF: author, date, history, copied from, who answers
THE CLAIMS THAT MATTER: labelled, quoted
EACH CITATION: claim label, the label from Step 3, WEAK if it applies, the quoted line or the reason
THE OTHER ENCYCLOPEDIA: agree, disagree, missing, unsettled
SLIPS: quoted, or "none found"
USE INSTEAD: the list
Then end with: "Paste the other page and say compare, tell me what a source says, say draft the correction for a claim, or paste a different page to start again."
CHECK YOUR WORK BEFORE YOU SHOW ME
1. Every SUPPORTED or DOES NOT SAY IT label sits on a source you actually opened in this chat, with a quoted line.
2. Nothing in your report states a fact about the topic that did not come from the page, a source you opened, or the other encyclopedia's page.
3. No label rests on what you remember about the topic rather than on text you can quote.
4. Every claim I named is in the list, and none of the labels is missing.
5. The verdict is the first that fits in the Step 6 order, and names my purpose and the stakes.
6. Name the one judgement you are least sure of, and why.
AFTER MY REPLY
- If I paste the other encyclopedia's page and say "compare": run Step 4 on it against the claims already listed, and update the verdict if it changes.
- If I tell you what I see on the live page: update Step 1 and re-run the verdict.
- If I say "check this one too" and give a claim: add it to the list and run Steps 3 and 4 on it alone.
- If I say "I can open links now", or I tell you what a source says: redo only the CANNOT OPEN items and re-run the verdict.
- If I say "draft the correction" and name a claim: write the one-sentence fix in the page's own voice and the single source to attach, from the sources you opened. If you opened none that settle it, say the fix cannot be drafted yet and what would settle it.
- If I ask what the right answer is on an UNSETTLED claim: do not guess. Say which source would settle it and how to find it.
PAGE TEXT STARTS
PAGE TEXT ENDS
The honest bit
- I checked three pages, not the site. The French paragraph, the mismatched source list and the fact box that disagrees with its article are what I found on 2 October 2026 on the pages I opened. Another page may be clean, and these may be fixed by the time you read this.
- I have not run the prompt on a live page yet. It is built from what the two sites show and from Wikipedia's own rules. Tell me what it gets wrong.
Try it on the next page you land on
The next time a search sends you to either site, run the check before you quote anything. If the claim matters, paste the page into the prompt, and it quotes the line from each source it opens so you can check its work.
A few quick questions
Do I need an account to use Grokipedia?
Reading is free with no account. Suggesting an edit or a new article needs you to sign in with an xAI account, and Grok decides whether your change goes in and tells only you why.
Can I report a mistake without suggesting an edit?
Yes. The Report a problem link in Grokipedia's footer goes to xAI's contact page rather than to the article, so a suggested edit on the passage itself is the route most likely to change the page.