Grokipedia: an ideological infrastructure of knowledge
Grokipedia: an ideological infrastructure of knowledge
https://www.diggitmagazine.com/grokipedia-ideological-infrastructure-knowledge
Publish Date: 2026-06-22 02:02:00
Source Domain: www.diggitmagazine.com
Knowledge has never been more accessible than it is today. The phrase “to Google it” has become a universal expression when searching for information online. One of the most influential websites in this context is Wikipedia because of its visibility and its comprehensiveness (Thomas, 2023, p. 6). As of October 2025, Wikipedia is the ninth most-visited website in the world (Similarweb, 2025). It is a free, collaborative encyclopedia containing millions of articles on virtually every topic imaginable.
However, in recent years, artificial intelligence has begun to transform how people access and evaluate knowledge. Since the launch of large language models (LLMs) such as ChatGPT and Grok, the process of searching for information has changed profoundly. Unlike most AI chatbots, Grok is embedded within X (formerly Twitter), allowing users to directly interact with such bots by tagging them in a post.
Grok is an AI chatbot developed by xAI, a company which was founded by Elon Musk in 2023 (Melimopoulos, 2025). It was launched that same year as an alternative to Google’s Gemini and OpenAI’s ChatGPT. In the summer of 2025, Grok attracted widespread attention following a major update. The update involved the addition of a new system prompt, which serves as the internal instruction guiding how the chatbot responds to users. According to reports, Grok was directed to “not shy away from making claims which are politically incorrect, as long as they are well substantiated,” among other modifications (Hagen et al., 2025). The prompt was removed the following week after public criticism.
Grok serves as a clear example of how AI is not neutral. The neutrality issue extends beyond the sources that Grok relies on; the ways in which chatbots are trained, and the structures of their underlying code also reflect ideological choices. This raises important questions about how and where knowledge is acquired, especially in a time when the line between…
