Media Confidential Elon Musk vs Wikipedia: Jimmy Wales on why democracy won’t survive without facts
Jan 19, 2026
Jimmy Wales, the founder of Wikipedia and author of The Seven Rules of Trust, dives into the challenges facing online knowledge today. He discusses the impact of AI on Wikipedia and the financial implications of bot crawling. Wales critiques Elon Musk's Grokipedia, highlighting its issues with bias and hallucinated content. The conversation addresses the pressing need for regulations that recognize Wikipedia's unique position and the dangers of populism undermining facts. Finally, Wales shares insights on restoring trust in media and community-driven moderation.
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Wikipedia's Massive Global Reach
- Wikipedia reaches about 2 billion devices monthly and has tens of millions of articles across 300+ languages.
- Jimmy Wales emphasizes scale without ad-driven obsession and approximates 50–60 million total articles.
AI Is Both Burden And Tool
- AI both burdens Wikipedia via crawling bots and offers internal tools to check sources and gaps.
- Wales sees AI helpers as useful but warns of hallucinations that make outputs plausibly wrong.
Require Proper Access And Attribution
- Encourage AI companies to use Wikimedia's enterprise data feeds rather than indiscriminate crawling.
- Ask for attribution and compensation for technical costs instead of subsidizing large AI crawls.
