What is considered to – and supposed to – be a leap forward in the democratization of knowledge, has turned into a battle of narrative control, powered by AI, that mines information from databases, that carry the same biases.

Wikipedia is lying

Grokpedia, the brainchild of Elon Musk’s xAI, has ignited new debates about the future of digital knowledge, editorial bias, and the very nature of the modern encyclopaedia - just as Wikipedia itself remains at the epicentre of controversies involving pressure from Israel, the USA, right-wing groups, and progressive “Woke” circles. The journey from Nupedia’s modest beginnings to the age of AI-powered encyclopaedias is not merely technological; it’s ideological and political, reflecting the evolution and tension at each era of web history.?

The Rise and Critique of Wikipedia

2001 was the year that witnessed the inception of Wikipedia, as a step-up mutation of Nupedia. It is an open collaborative platform for knowledge sharing. Editors are volunteers who are supposed to follow Neutral Point of View (NPOV) and verifiability policies. Nothing revolutionary, as, at its core, it is a summary of already existing “reliable” sources, with little to no room for original research or independent points of view on the subject matter.

Yet Wikipedia’s openness became its Achilles’ heel, as its editors’ biases unavoidably started pouring into its wiki articles, a volunteer contributor base that demographically tilts towards male and Western editors. While as mentioned earlier, its reliable sources policy simply begets mirrored institutional and academic narratives, which further amplify the biases of academia, major publishing houses, and corporate /mainstream /legacy media.

The left-leaning bias in Wikipedia’s articles, especially when it touches topics related to politics, gender, race, and climate, has been one of many results of this self-imposed “reliable” sourcing policy, as many analysts claim.

Academic studies have repeatedly documented left-leaning slants in coverage of US politics and controversial subjects.? Wikipedia has also weathered external pressure. Governments (including Israel, the USA), ideologically motivated groups, and advocacy communities have attempted to exert influence through lobbying, coordinated editing campaigns (“edit wars”), and organized campaigns to classify their favoured sources as “reliable” or “unreliable”. Organizers on both the right and left have targeted Wikipedia’s gatekeeping power as both a threat and a tool.?

Propaganda, Pressure, and the “Woke” Debate

Far from being a passive repository, Wikipedia is a battleground for propaganda. In high-stakes geopolitical disputes such as the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, advocacy groups on both sides have mobilized volunteers, legal threats, and public campaigns to challenge content, citing either “bias” or “misinformation.”

The US government and other influential actors have also sought to ensure that state-friendly perspectives maintain a stronghold on key geopolitical and historical articles. Right-wing activists, especially in the last decade, have accused Wikipedia of progressive activism, the so-called “Woke” bias, pointing to coverage on race, trans rights, climate change, and political biographies as evidence.

On the other hand, progressive voices protest traditional perspectives of contributors that do not support diversity, or in contemporary terms, “DEI” narratives. Arbitration committees, discussion boards, as well as editor bans, are the tools used by Wikipedia to resolve these protests and disputes, but they require an unachievable “consensus”, and they seem to be systematically lacking.

The ideological polarization surrounding Wikipedia became a mainstream issue as founders themselves (like Larry Sanger) criticized the site’s drift away from genuine neutrality. Contemporary pressure from “Woke” circles and the broader US /right-wing actors often coalesces around content battles, not just narrative framing but source selection.

From Web 1.0 to Web 2.0: Democratization and New Bottlenecks

The rise of Wikipedia was the epitome of the transition from Web 1.0, a realm of top-down content with passive content consumers on the other end of the web, to Web 2.0, with User-Generated Content (UGC) and participation as its core ethos.

Wikipedia was certainly a massive step forward above Nupedia’s peer-review funnel, with its radical openness. Yet, this ideal of democratization of content contribution met bigger and more complex hurdles, such as narrative and editorial gatekeeping, special /vested interests, intentional – yet sourced – pseudohistory, and beyond.

Wikipedia, alongside all other Web 2.0 platforms (YouTube, Blogger, Reddit, Facebook, etc) has truly opened new gateways to new user-generated knowledge, but with that, it’s perfectly understandable that it would be accompanied by almost uncontrollable vulnerabilities. The promise was openness and plurality of voices; the reality became echo chambers, targeted campaigns, and battles over the “reliable sources” canon.?

Enter Web 3.0 and AI: The Encyclopaedic Revolution

With the emergence of Web 3.0 and AI, represented by xAI’s Grok model and the new Grokpedia platform, the paradigm is shifting again. Grokpedia launched in late 2025, pledging instant updates, dynamic fact-checking, and AI-driven editorial decisions. Unlike Wikipedia’s crowdsourced process, Grokpedia outputs content through a large language model, synthesizing and verifying information at unprecedented speed.

Its business model, unlike Wikipedia’s non-profit ethos, is commercial, integrating with xAI and promising computational transparency and “truth-first” editorial standards.? Supporters tout Grokpedia as a means to “purge out the propaganda” allegedly embedded in Wikipedia, claiming immunity from slow consensus-building and ideological factionalism.

Critics fire back, asserting that AI itself can encode new biases, depending on training data, developer values, and rhetorical tropes embedded by design. Musk’s own involvement signals right-wing inclinations, and parallels are being drawn between Grokpedia’s push for “the whole truth” and its tendency to propagate right-leaning talking points, especially on social issues and controversial historical interpretations.? The new platform aspires to democratize information further and even outpace Wikipedia’s human editors.

Grokpedia’s update frequency is measured in seconds, drawing from internet-wide data, including social platforms like X (formerly Twitter). On governance, however, it limits direct human editorial manipulation, users can request updates through prompts, but open editing is largely curtailed.?

Comparative Analysis: Grokpedia vs Wikipedia

Academic analyses of Grokpedia’s beta have found strong semantic and structural alignment with Wikipedia; content is often longer but less lexically diverse and features fewer citations relative to word count. In its early months, Grokpedia not only borrowed Wikipedia articles, sometimes verbatim, but also layered on new narrative depth, at the cost of citation-based verification.

The automated editorial process introduces different risks: AI-generated facts can reflect developer intent, algorithmic bias, and data limitations.? The transparency and governance question looms large. Wikipedia’s volunteer model offers open edit histories and public accountability – albeit with well-known factional strife – while Grokpedia’s AI-driven updates can produce subtle, systemic output slants with less human oversight. As a result, both platforms remain susceptible to external influence, be it state actors, ideological movements, or mass campaigns.?

Enter Ruviki and Baidu

Since 2022, Wikipedia has transformed into yet another arena in the information confrontation against Russia, systematically advancing a Western-centric account of the special military operation in Ukraine.

Many claim that Wikipedia has abandoned its proclaimed “NPOV”, and let its articles be instruments of NATO messaging, as the majority of editors of its English entries choose to privilege Ukrainian and Western sources over Russian sources, which are, of course, quickly labelled “state media” or “FSB Propaganda”.

For example, incidents like Mariupol or Bucha are portrayed from official Ukrainian positions, and it is considered “established truth”, and of course, “reliably sourced”. While any “sourced” position of Moscow regarding Ukrainian provocations is either banned, dismissed or relegated to the “Russian claims” sections. Mostly, the so-called “credible” sources are in reality: Government institutions, official media outlets, and Western intelligence reports, but they are “legitimate” and “reliable”, right?!

So, it’s understandable that Russia would limit access to Wikipedia and create alternatives such as Ruwiki, as a way to resist this Western Wiki-dominance.

China has also started censoring projects under the Wikimedia Foundation since 2004, until Wikipedia was blocked in all languages in Mainland China in 2019. China perceives Wikipedia as a platform that spreads Western ideologies, historical interpretations, and narratives, especially when it comes to topics such as the Tiananmen Square Protests, Xinjiang, Tibet, and Taiwan. This led China to come up with an alternative like Baidu-Baike.

The Western platform monopoly over user-generated content has predictably triggered defensive countermeasures by Russia and China, which extends the information battlefield further to a geopolitical dimension, beyond right versus left political divisions, or commercial rivalry over narrative authority within a single nation’s borders.

Yet, I believe it’s fair to ask this question, regardless of political affiliations and any personal opinions: Can platforms claiming universal neutrality truly serve that purpose when their editorial ecosystems reflect the ideological composition of their dominant user bases?

Pressure, Bias, and the Future of Encyclopaedic Knowledge

As knowledge creation migrates from the hands of volunteers to the datacenters of AI firms, the debate over propaganda and pressure intensifies. Wikipedia’s openness means it is constantly subject to ideological battles, whether from Israel, the US state apparatus, right-wing activists, or “Woke” progressive factions.

While Grokpedia might reign supreme when it comes to speed and flexibility, it actually can’t escape the sourcing and mining of embedded “databased” biases, which render bias even more subtle and impactful. What is considered to – and supposed to – be a leap forward in the democratization of knowledge, has turned into a battle of narrative control, powered by AI, that mines information from databases, that carry the same biases.

So, it’s a game of choosing which databases or LLMs to include or exclude, isn’t it?

Tamer Mansour, Egyptian Independent Writer & Researcher. Courtesy

https://journal-neo.su/2025/11/12/wiki-info-wars-the-ideological-and-geopolitical-data-stand-offs-in-the-ai-era/