Dear P** Wikimedia Leadership and Legal Team,
I am writing on behalf of the Dusoma Foundation and a community of volunteer contributors and editors who have devoted years of unpaid labor to building the public knowledge base that powers Wikipedia and Wikimedia Commons. We are deeply disturbed to see that content we created in good faith—text and research shared under Creative Commons—now appears to have been reproduced by “Grokipedia,” the site launched by Elon Musk’s company xAI.
Initial comparisons (and the Washington Post) show verbatim or near-verbatim copying of Wikipedia articles.This would represent a wholesale breach of the CC-BY-SA license, which requires attribution and share-alike terms. More importantly, it violates the trust of millions of volunteers who built Wikipedia believing that the Foundation would defend the integrity of our work and the ideals of free, neutral, and factual knowledge.
For many of us, this is not a minor licensing issue—it is traumatic.
Creators who risked their safety to document conflict zones or marginalized communities are now seeing their work republished on a platform whose owner publicly amplifies racist, anti-trans, and conspiratorial content. Our words are being used to legitimize a site that spreads the very misinformation we volunteered to fight. It feels like a betrayal of everything Wikipedia stands for.
We ask Wikimedia support us in taking immediate action:
- Launch a formal investigation into Grokipedia’s use of Wikimedia content and determine whether license violations or other infringements have occurred.
- Engage legal counsel to send preservation and takedown demands to xAI and X Corp, seeking disclosure of training data and sources used in Grokipedia.
- Provide technical and legal support to contributors who wish to register and enforce their copyrights, including funding for group registration or legal defense.
- Issue a public statement affirming that Wikimedia will not tolerate the repurposing of volunteer labor to promote misinformation or hate.
- Advocate for systemic reform—including free or low-cost group registration—so that Creative Commons contributors can meaningfully enforce their rights.
The registration requirement of 17 U.S.C. § 412 effectively denies small creators any access to justice. It creates a paywall on enforcement that only corporations can afford. Wikimedia’s voice could be pivotal in demanding reform and in supporting a test case that challenges this inequity.
We built Wikipedia because we believed in open, ethical sharing of knowledge. We need the Foundation to stand with us now—to defend the license, protect contributors like Grace and Jacob who’s research is being misused, and ensure that our work is never weaponized to advance racism or disinformation.
We would appreciate confirmation that this message has been received and a point of contact for continued coordination. We are prepared to provide detailed evidence of copied materials and to collaborate with your legal team immediately.
With respect and urgency,
Kathryn Born
The Dusoma Foundation
Dusoma.org