Wikimedia says AI bots and summaries are hurting Wikipedia’s visitors

Wikimedia is sounding the alarm on the influence AI is having on dependable information and data on the web. In a , Wikimedia’s senior director of product, Marshall Miller, lays out the influence on web page views that the muse attributes to the rise of LLM chatbots and AI-generated summaries in search outcomes.

“We imagine that these declines replicate the influence of generative AI and social media on how folks search info, particularly with search engines like google and yahoo offering solutions on to searchers, usually primarily based on Wikipedia content material,” stated Miller.

The muse has more and more confronted whose sophistication has made it tough to parse human visitors from bots. After bettering bot detection to yield extra correct metrics, Wikipedia’s information reveals an 8 % drop in web page views yr over yr.

Miller paints an image of an existential danger larger than that of a web site’s web page views. He posits that if Wikipedia’s visitors continues to say no, it might threaten what he calls “the one website of its scale with requirements of verifiability, neutrality and transparency powering info everywhere in the web.” He warns that fewer visits to Wikipedia would result in fewer volunteers, much less funding and in the end much less dependable content material.

The answer he provides is for LLMs and search outcomes to be extra intentional in giving customers the chance to work together straight with the supply for the data being introduced. “For folks to belief info shared on the web, platforms ought to make it clear the place the data is sourced from and elevate alternatives to go to and take part in these sources,” Miller writes.

Earlier this summer time, Wikipedia floated the thought of AI-generated summaries that would seem on the prime of articles. The venture was earlier than it started after fierce backlash from the positioning’s volunteer editors.