Wikipedia, through its operating body the Wikimedia Foundation, has called on artificial intelligence (AI) developers to responsibly access its vast repository of knowledge. Facing declining human traffic and widespread AI scraping, the nonprofit encyclopedia is urging companies to utilize its paid Wikimedia Enterprise platform instead of directly scraping its site, emphasizing the need for proper attribution and financial support.
In a recent blog post, the Wikimedia Foundation laid out a straightforward plan to ensure its website remains sustainable in the AI era, despite a noticeable drop in user engagement. The organization specifically asked AI developers to use its content "responsibly" by ensuring proper attribution for contributions and accessing content through its dedicated paid product.
The opt-in, paid service, Wikimedia Enterprise, offers a structured way for companies to use Wikipedia's content at scale. This approach not only prevents "severely taxing Wikipedia's servers," as explained in a blog post by the Wikimedia Foundation, but also ensures that AI companies contribute financially to the organization's crucial nonprofit mission.
The Foundation's plea comes amidst growing concerns over AI's impact on its operations. While no explicit threats of legal action or penalties for scraping were made, Wikipedia recently revealed a significant portion of its traffic originated from AI bots attempting to evade detection. After updating its bot-detection systems, the organization discovered that unusually high traffic spikes in May and June were largely due to these AI bots. Concurrently, "human page views" experienced an 8% year-over-year decline.
In its newly released guidelines for AI developers and providers, Wikipedia stresses the importance of attribution. It mandates that generative AI developers credit the human contributors whose content fuels their outputs. The Foundation articulated this stance, stating, "For people to trust information shared on the internet, platforms should make it clear where the information is sourced from and elevate opportunities to visit and participate in those sources." It further warned that "With fewer visits to Wikipedia, fewer volunteers may grow and enrich the content, and fewer individual donors may support this work," highlighting the potential threat to its volunteer-driven model.
Earlier this year, the organization also unveiled its AI strategy for editors. This strategy focuses on leveraging AI to streamline tedious tasks, automate translations, and provide other tools to assist its human editors, rather than replacing them, underscoring a "humans-first" approach within its own operations.
