The Wikimedia Foundation, the non-profit organization that hosts Wikipedia, has called on artificial ielligence companies to stop free-scraping data from the online encyclopedia to train their models. Wikipedia’s request is simple: instead of pushing the website’s free servers, use the company’s paid API, Wikimedia Eerprise.
Wikimedia argues that AI models need high-quality, human-edited information to maiain their quality and efficiency, and Wikipedia, with its extensive network of volueer editors who keep coe up-to-date in more than 300 languages, is one of the most valuable resources in this regard.
Wikipedia’s request from AI companies
The request comes at a time when Wikipedia’s business model is directly threatened by the very technologies that feed off its data. Users are now increasingly asking AI chatbots their questions instead of searching Wikipedia.
On the other hand, Wikipedia (the seveh most visited website in the world) relies on public donations to finance its expenses ($179 million in the 2023-2024 fiscal year) and does not display advertisemes. When users use ChatGPT instead of visiting the site directly, they don’t see the donation requests at the top of the page, putting the foundation’s revenue at risk.
Also, the Wikimedia Foundation recely found that unusually high traffic in May and June was caused by AI bots trying to hide their ideities and scrape data. This is while human visits to the pages have decreased by 8% compared to last year.
In its stateme, Wikimedia argues that Wikipedia’s role as the backbone of knowledge on the Iernet is now more importa than ever. According to experts, there is concern that artificial ielligence will eveually start to eat itself without first-hand information. Productive artificial ielligence cannot exist without new knowledge created by humans. Without it, AI systems will collapse.
Studies have shown that when AI developers try to remove Wikipedia from their training data, “the resulting answers are significaly less accurate, less varied, and less verifiable.”
Wikipedia’s overall transparency (providing references and verifiable sources and publicly recording all changes) has made it one of the most trusted platforms; Where no algorithm tracks your behavior and everyone sees exactly the same information. In general, Wikimedia urges AI developers to consume its coe responsibly. This responsibility includes financial support.
Of course, Wikimedia emphasizes that it is not against artificial ielligence and even uses it to help editors with tedious tasks (such as automatic translation); But these tools should support humans, not replace them.
