In late October, Elon Musk released a Wikipedia alternative, with pages written by his AI chatbot Grok. Unlike its nearly quarter-century-old namesake, Musk said Grokipedia would strip out the “woke” from Wikipedia, which he previously described as an “extension of legacy media propaganda.” But while Musk’s Grokipedia, in his eyes, is propaganda-free, it seems to have a proclivity toward right-wing hagiography.
Take Grokipedia’s entry on Adolf Hitler. Until earlier this month, the entry read, “Adolf Hitler was the Austrian-born Führer of Germany from 1933 to 1945.” That phrase has been edited to “Adolf Hitler was an Austrian-born German politician and dictator,” but Grok still refers to Hitler by his honorific one clause later, writing that Hitler served as “Führer und Reichskanzler from August 1934 until his suicide in 1945.” NBC News also pointed out that the page on Hitler goes on for some 13,000 words before the first mention of the Holocaust.
Archive: http://archive.today/aEcz0
Tbh, from a historical point of view, The Führer was used to describe Hitler. Now in Germany, it’s basically only used to refer to him.
I’m not for deleting history, and I think the context is important. People needs to know why The Führer or “der Führer” is bad.
A context which I think would have helped in another example would be the N-word. If everyone was really taught the history around that word, I think/hope alot of people would think twice before using it today.
Or is that only me?
Mentioning Adolf Hitler’s title (Führer) is fine (and the information about such title should be included in the wikipedia artcile about him) but why refer to him accross the article by such title?
That’s a good point. But The Führer is not something positive, and I wouldnt think much about it.
I’m don’t think this was an intentional way to make him sound better. I think we should be much more aware of fact checking what it says, than overusing a historical word to describe Hitler. That might just be an AI thing.
With Grok, it’s always a safe bet to assume malevolence is the cause for any changes.
if it’s his honorific and not his official title then that should be clarified… Musk is a nazi, i’m sure grokepedia is a bunch of revisionist bullshit, but it’s not really the smoking gun and seems more like grok not groking the difference between his title and nickname.
also it pisses me off that they stole grok from the hitchhikers guide to the galaxy
“Grok” comes from Heinlein’s Stranger in a Strange Land, where it was a Martian loan-word.
Grok is also a word in hitchhikers guide to the galaxy and is specifically named as the inspiration for Grok….
but thanks for playing “i read google ai overview”
It’s not that clear really. His official titles would’ve been president and chancellor and he only got one of those in a manner the Weimar constitution legally envisioned. So the system, by which we would decide what an official title is today, was abused and then suspended all together. The title “der Führer” was basically a google translate from “il duce” in Italy and is not entirely honorific because he was leader of the Nazi party first. And he continues to be referred to by this semi-unofficial, semi-honorific title even in history books today and they don’t always bother to disambiguate or add that they mean it sarcastically. So while Grok should be shot into space. And Nazi saluting Melon Usk deserves to be under this much scrutiny and more and can otherwise go eff himself as far as I’m concerned. The Ockham’s razor for this gaff tells me the LLM just regurgitated book knowledge and nobody bothered to filter this with 2025 sensibilities. Not great but also more of a storm in a teacup. This won’t make the top ten of atrocious things coming from the Melon.
I was also looking for a word other than ‘honorific.’ I find it has a positive connotation and should not apply to the titles of such infamous individuals as Hitler or Mussolini. But I could not come up with anything snappy.
we could just say “unofficial title”?