In a move that highlights the growing tension between generative AI and the open web, the Wikimedia Foundation has issued a formal call for artificial intelligence companies to stop scraping its website and instead use a paid API service.
The nonprofit organization, which runs Wikipedia, laid out its position in a blog post on Monday, urging AI developers to access its vast repository of content "responsibly." This means using its paid product, Wikimedia Enterprise, and ensuring proper attribution to the human volunteers who create the site's content.
The plea comes as Wikipedia faces a dual challenge: a surge in automated AI bots scraping its pages and a simultaneous decline in human readership. The foundation revealed that after updating its bot-detection systems, it discovered that unusually high traffic in May and June was largely driven by AI bots attempting to "evade detection" by mimicking human users. During this period, "human page views" declined by 8% year-over-year.
A Sustainable Model for the AI Era
Wikimedia Enterprise is presented as a solution that benefits both sides. The opt-in, paid platform allows companies to use Wikipedia's content at scale without "severely taxing Wikipedia’s servers." More importantly, the revenue helps support the foundation's nonprofit mission, which relies on a global community of volunteer editors and individual donors.
"For people to trust information shared on the internet, platforms should make it clear where the information is sourced from," the blog post stated. It warned that with "fewer visits to Wikipedia, fewer volunteers may grow and enrich the content, and fewer individual donors may support this work."
The foundation's approach is notably collaborative rather than confrontational. Unlike other platforms like Reddit, which have struck lucrative licensing deals, Wikimedia has not threatened legal action against scrapers. Instead, it is appealing to the industry's responsibility, emphasizing that its paid API offers a more efficient and ethically sound method of access, complete with a 99% service-level agreement (SLA).
AI: A Tool to Support Human Efforts!
While challenging AI companies on scraping, the Wikimedia Foundation is not opposed to the technology itself. Earlier this year, it released an AI strategy focused on developing tools to assist its human editors with tedious tasks like translation, rather than replacing them.
The call to action marks a critical moment for the future of open knowledge. As AI models increasingly rely on sources like Wikipedia for training, the foundation is drawing a line to ensure that this symbiotic relationship does not come at the cost of the very ecosystem that produces reliable, human-curated information.
To learn more, visit Wisdomplexus!
Recommended For You:
AI-Generated Content for VR and AR: Opportunities, Challenges, and Use Cases
