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

  • dukemirage@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    106
    arrow-down
    1
    ·
    11 hours ago

    Führer is not just „leader“, it is tainted and using it as a substitute for Hitler in a factual text is super weird, like casually calling Jesus in his Wikipedia article „our lord and savior“ now and then.

    • OneOrTheOtherDontAskMe@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      24
      ·
      10 hours ago

      Thank you for this comparison. That’s a fun one and one that’s made a little more ‘subtle’ in the US if only because of how common that language is among the populace in regions and how pervasive protestantism is in advertising/messaging.

      • themurphy@lemmy.ml
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        26
        arrow-down
        1
        ·
        10 hours ago

        Jesus would’ve hated America. I think according to the bible he lost his shit twice - both because of capitalism.

        • entropicdrift@lemmy.sdf.org
          link
          fedilink
          English
          arrow-up
          6
          ·
          edit-2
          7 hours ago

          There was one other time, when he cursed a tree because he didn’t like its fruit, but yeah in general he disliked the nascent forms of capitalism and money people that he encountered.

    • khannie@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      7
      ·
      8 hours ago

      Yeah I fully agree with this. I am thick in the middle of “Third Reich Trilogy” which gives an enormous amount of context to the word though.

      If they changed it, it’s further evidence of scummy behaviour, but on its own it’s not a huge red flag for me with historical context.

      Can’t recommend the books enough if you’re into that. The lad must have spent half his life in primary sources.

    • ObjectivityIncarnate@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      1
      ·
      8 hours ago

      Is there another more ‘generic’ German term that would fit when talking about this period of time in retrospect? So you could have one line that says the German equivalent of ‘he was the leader in Germany during this time period, commonly referred to by the title Fuhrer’, and then no need to keep using “Fuhrer” anymore in the rest of the article.