Putting aside my political concerns about Elon Musk starting an encyclopedia, I thought I'd look up the indie rock band Beat Happening as a tester. My first thoughts were that it was very impressive. There's a confused garbled image link (that appears as text) but otherwise it looks convincing:
> Beat Happening was an American indie pop band formed in Olympia, Washington, in 1982 by vocalist and guitarist Calvin Johnson, guitarist Heather Lewis, and drummer Bret Lunsford.
Then I though, hey let's see what wikipedia says, here it is:
> Beat Happening was an American indie pop band formed in Olympia, Washington in 1982. Calvin Johnson, Heather Lewis, and Bret Lunsford were the band's continual members.
I came away less impressed- grokipedia's opening paragraph reads to me like a very minor rephrase. I assume wikipedia is in the training data here and being spat back out?
In fact going back to the garbled image link:
> 
Even this seems to be a reference to the wilipedia image at the top of the article titled:
The point is rewriting the articles that matter to Musk. Nobody cares about the rest of the articles, they are there just to justify Grokipedia being an encyclopedia at all.
> Beat Happening was an American indie pop band formed in Olympia, Washington, in 1982 by vocalist and guitarist Calvin Johnson, guitarist Heather Lewis, and drummer Bret Lunsford.
Then I though, hey let's see what wikipedia says, here it is:
> Beat Happening was an American indie pop band formed in Olympia, Washington in 1982. Calvin Johnson, Heather Lewis, and Bret Lunsford were the band's continual members.
I came away less impressed- grokipedia's opening paragraph reads to me like a very minor rephrase. I assume wikipedia is in the training data here and being spat back out?
In fact going back to the garbled image link:
> 
Even this seems to be a reference to the wilipedia image at the top of the article titled:
> File:Beat Happening (1988 Rough Trade publicity photo).jpg
What a collosal waste of resources? Is anyone under the impression that this kind of "rephrased and lesss acurate wikipedia" is going to be helpful?