The Verge: “Google’s Gemini, AI Mode, and AI Overviews, Perplexity, and Microsoft are starting to cite Musk’s Wikipedia knockoff…ChatGPT is using Grokipedia as a source, and it’s not the only AI tool to do so. Citations to Elon Musk’s AI-generated encyclopedia are starting to appear in answers from Google’s AI Overviews, AI Mode, and Gemini, too. Data suggests that’s on the rise, heightening concerns about accuracy and misinformation as Musk seeks to reshape reality in his image. Since the warped Wikipedia-clone launched late last October, Grokipedia technically remains a minor source of information overall. Glen Allsopp, head of marketing strategy and research at SEO company Ahrefs, told The Verge the firm’s testing found Grokipedia referenced in more than 263,000 ChatGPT responses from 13.6 million prompts, citing roughly 95,000 individual Grokipedia pages. By comparison, Allsopp said the English-language Wikipedia showed up in 2.9 million responses. “They’re quite a way off, but it’s still impressive for how new they are,” he said..

In many cases, AI tools appear to be citing Grokipedia to answer niche, obscure, or highly specific factual questions, as The Guardian reported late last week. Analysts agree. Jim Yu, CEO of analytics firm BrightEdge, told The Verge that ChatGPT and AI Overviews use Grokipedia for largely “non-sensitive queries” like encyclopedic lookups and definitions, though differences are emerging in how much authority they afford it. For AI Overviews, Grokipedia tends not to stand alone, Yu said, and “typically appears alongside several other sources” as “a supplementary reference rather than a primary source.” When ChatGPT uses Grokipedia as a source, however, it gives it much more authority, Yu said, “often featuring it as one of the first sources cited for a query.”…