The Wikimedia Foundation, the nonprofit organization behind Wikipedia, has outlined its strategy for navigating the era of artificial intelligence amid declining user traffic. In a recent blog post, the foundation called on AI developers to use its content responsibly by providing proper attribution and accessing data through its commercial platform, Wikimedia Enterprise.
This paid service allows companies to utilize Wikipedia’s content at scale without overloading the encyclopedia’s servers. The foundation highlighted that subscribing to the platform is also a way for AI companies to financially support its nonprofit mission.
While the organization has not threatened legal action against data scraping, it recently discovered that a significant portion of its traffic was from AI bots attempting to evade detection. After updating its systems, Wikipedia confirmed that unusual traffic spikes in May and June were from these bots, while human page views had simultaneously fallen by 8% year-over-year.
The foundation stressed the importance of attribution, arguing that for users to trust online information, they must know its source. It warned that a drop in direct visits to Wikipedia could reduce the number of volunteer contributors and individual donors who are essential for the site’s growth and maintenance.
This initiative follows the release of Wikipedia’s internal AI strategy earlier this year. The plan focuses on using AI to assist its human editors with tasks such as translation and workflow automation, rather than replacing them.
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