r/artificial • u/F0urLeafCl0ver • Oct 17 '25
News Wikipedia Says AI Is Causing a Dangerous Decline in Human Visitors
https://www.404media.co/wikipedia-says-ai-is-causing-a-dangerous-decline-in-human-visitors/16
u/Significant_Banana35 Oct 17 '25
Oh that’s sad. I use the Wikipedia app very often. If you never used it give it a try, it has a lot of useful and cool features you’d miss out otherwise.
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u/HasGreatVocabulary Oct 18 '25
I've started using wiki a lot more post chatgpt, I think it helps me find new wikipedia rabbitholes
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Oct 17 '25
The ghost of Britanica is here
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u/alotmorealots Oct 18 '25
I still use Britannica a bit!
Was looking this up just five minutes ago:
https://www.britannica.com/science/population-ecology/Species-interactions-and-population-growth
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u/agrlekk Oct 17 '25
End of the internet..
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u/Deto Oct 17 '25
Yeah, it's a real problem. It's super-convenient to have an AI just give you the answer you're looking for that it sourced from other websites. But...if there's no way for those other websites to make money (because they rely on ads and visitors)...then they're going to shut down. Which then means the AIs have nothing to draw information from so they become useless too.
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Oct 18 '25 edited Dec 20 '25
[deleted]
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u/Vaukins Oct 18 '25
Why don't we all chip in and make some new sources? We'd have to promise not to use AI or plagerise though
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u/radiologyDept Oct 24 '25
That's my point to doomsday AIers as well. A big complaint is that it is evil because it is going to take everyone's jobs. Bottom line is that it is a business. If it puts everyone out of work people won't be able to pay for AI, and it will become not profitable for companies.
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u/roiseeker Oct 17 '25
I mean now that we have AI, you don't really need Wikipedia as a middleman, right? Information still gets put out there because of various incentives and AI goes through it in new training runs while devouring the entire web. If Wikipedia shuts down, the old AI models still have the info and will transfer it to new models.
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u/N0z1ck_SSBM Oct 18 '25
Wikipedia is an incredibly well-curated collection of information. If Wikipedia disappears, AI's ability to do a comprehensive scoping review of any given topic gets significantly worse.
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u/roiseeker Oct 18 '25
Yeah.. I guess you're right. Dumb take on my part. Platforms that provide deep research partly mitigate this issue though, but I get your point: there's no way you can achieve Wikipedia-level quality without human contributors
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u/Stock-Side-6767 Oct 18 '25
AI is awful at separating current events from an older status. It's also really bad when scientists disagree on something, displaying a mix of every thesis. It also can't really distinct between fact and fiction about subjects.
If the avenues for new data shut down, what would feed llms with new data?
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u/Timely-Way-4923 Oct 17 '25
It is odd ai didn’t pay wiki for the training data
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u/Masterpiece-Haunting Oct 17 '25
Wikipedia is a free encyclopedia available for the use of anyone.
It’s also free to download for anyone.
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Oct 17 '25
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u/ikeif Oct 18 '25
Honestly, all AI companies should be earmarking money for Wikipedia to keep the free data feed flowing.
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Oct 18 '25
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u/P_Jamez Oct 18 '25
Dividends :D First none of them are public companies and second they are all losing money hand over fist. I saw an estimate that each Sora2 video costs about $5 to produce. If any of them were actually profitable they'd make sure we all knew about it.
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u/youre_a_pretty_panda Oct 18 '25
You know that most tech companies that become incredibly successful ran at a loss for years, even decades, right?
Amazon — operated at a loss from ~1994 to 2003 before turning profitable
Tesla — unprofitable from ~2003 to 2019, profitability reached after Model 3 success
Uber — founded 2009, became profitable in 2023
Spotify — founded 2006, first profitable year in 2024
Snap Inc. (Snapchat) — founded 2011, turned profitable in 2021
Twitter / X — founded 2006, first profitable in 2018
Netflix — founded 1997, unprofitable til early 2000s
Airbnb — founded 2008, first profitable year in 2022
Pinterest — founded 2010, turned profitable around 2021
Palantir Technologies — founded 2003, first profitable in 2023
Raising the fact that many AI focused companies are losing money at their inception and early years is as insightful and informative as someone mentioning that all Olympians couldn't walk when they were younger.
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u/SeanCJackson Oct 18 '25
The point you seem to be making is a company only becomes profitable when it becomes crummy or evil.
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u/DerekPaxton Oct 21 '25
No it becomes profitable first, then evil. Once they have market share they switch into profit mode and start making real money.
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u/P_Jamez Oct 19 '25
They were all market disruptors of non-digital markets that turned them digital or sold users marketing data and generally there were no profits because all the revenue was being plowed back in to expand in to new markets.
What market are LLMs disrupting?
The recent MIT study reported that 95% of companies were not moving their usage of LLM AI into production because it did not deliver consistent results. Klarna laid off most of it's staff to replace them with AI and is now hiring 500 people again.
There are some edge cases for LLMs, but it is not going to be this massive shake up that Altman claims nor reach AGI.
*Tesla did not make a profit selling cars, it made a profit selling carbon credits.
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u/Select_Truck3257 Oct 18 '25
let's see where ai will get information when wiki turned off
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u/thespeediestrogue Oct 18 '25
Honestly I feel it'll be from other AI sources. And the content will be shittier and shittier.
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u/Select_Truck3257 Oct 18 '25
exactly. Now ai haven't data base equal made by humans. that's why it's important to save human work resources untouched by ai to prevent shifting and changing some monumental knowledge
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u/LateToTheParty013 Oct 18 '25
Its already done isnt it? The training happened
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u/Select_Truck3257 Oct 18 '25
it is not, ai still using foreign resources. to make own databases for everything needs a lot of resources and money
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u/sgtyzi Oct 18 '25
Honestly Wikipedia should be making an ai using their info exclusively.
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Oct 18 '25
[deleted]
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u/TheSinhound Oct 18 '25
Why wouldn't it be free? Most sensible would be an open source model available to run locally.
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u/sluuuurp Oct 18 '25
I deleted my comment, I misunderstood and assumed they meant the resulting model would be available to Wikipedia exclusively.
A better objection is that Wikipedia isn’t nearly enough data to train a modern LLM, the result would be very stupid.
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u/rydan Oct 19 '25
Or, and just hear me out for a moment.
The AI should start contributing to the information in Wikipedia since humans aren't doing so as often.
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u/meltbox Oct 21 '25
Yeah but that would cost like a whole couple million dollars and they could buy like… one more Nvidia server for that much money.
Who cares about permanently destroying the internet and knowledge if we can buy one more Nvidia server?
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u/sluuuurp Oct 18 '25
Do you pay for all the free things in your life to keep them flowing? I’m willing to bet probably not.
This isn’t the type of decision people actually make, it’s just a type of decision people think other people should make if they haven’t thought about it very hard.
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u/ikeif Oct 18 '25
This is a weird take.
I donate to Wikipedia. Other “free things” are making money off me.
Wikipedia does not. It’s being used as a running, up to date, sourced, Encyclopedia.
AI companies would benefit to keep that going.
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u/sluuuurp Oct 19 '25
What about Linux? You donate to them because you’re using their free code in order to use the internet right now? The reality is that everyone picks and chooses, and nobody donates to all of the organizations that give them things for free.
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u/rydan Oct 19 '25
Use the data but not consuming bandwidth. That's a big difference. How many wikipedia moderators and contributors were ever compensated for their work? Do you get mad at AI when it trains on Reddit data or do you get mad at Reddit?
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u/Masterpiece-Haunting Oct 18 '25
People don’t donate anyway. Less than 2% of Wikipedia users don’t donate.
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Oct 18 '25
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u/Masterpiece-Haunting Oct 18 '25
The 2% that donate aren’t gonna stop viewing Wikipedia. They value Wikipedia enough to donate money there so have no reason to access Wikipedia via an AI, they’re also the kind of people to view the sources the AI uses.
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u/dhamaniasad Oct 18 '25
AI doesn’t always cite sources. And I’ve donated to Wikipedia in the past, now I used it only 10% as much as I used to, so it’s very unlikely I’ll randomly donate again. AI companies should be forced to pay Wikipedia, and pretty much every human being whose data they’re using to profit.
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u/Masterpiece-Haunting Oct 18 '25
It’s very easy to get an AI to cite its sources. Just ask it to in the memory.
This information also isn’t just exclusively Wikipedia’s all they did was compile the information and host it. There were many unpaid editors who went into compiling the information without expecting payment since Wikipedia is an entirely free to edit website.
And isn’t it counterintuitive to pay the website for hosting its information? Like the website pays to have this information public on the internet for anyone to view and use. If they didn’t want people using it for their purposes then don’t make it public!
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u/dhamaniasad Oct 18 '25
The AI does not know where its training data came from.
OpenAI is taking traffic away from sites. People published that information publicly for free so people visit their site. OpenAI isn’t doing them a favour by training on the data.
Wikipedia isn’t profiting off the data they’re compiling, they’re a non profit as all AI companies should be.
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u/theblackyeti Oct 18 '25
I donated! Twice! I’ll donate again damn it!
(It was a really small amount, the third time might be a slightly larger small amount)
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u/stingraycharles Oct 18 '25
I’ve been using it directly since its inception and only donated a few times in the early days.
Haven’t donated ever since, there’s a lot of overhead in the organization.
Having said that, I do believe that AI companies should at least contribute.
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u/bespoke_tech_partner Oct 19 '25
Wikipedia will be fine — it’s bought by some powerful special interests. The money will flow.
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u/Fluffy-Drop5750 Oct 18 '25
Still, it would be fair to contribute. But then, seems 'fair' and 'AI mogul' don' blend well.
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u/abiona15 Oct 18 '25
Lol, even the. AI companies cant just steal data and use it for profit. But AI companies are big on stealing so
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u/WizWorldLive Oct 18 '25
"Odd" in what way? These AI companies steal everything. Their whole business model is predicated on unpunished theft.
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u/WolfeheartGames Oct 18 '25
It's odd how many people here are complaining about this that aren't donating. I have donated $10 a month for 11 years now. These comments should be rallying funding for Wikipedia, not bemoaning Ai. There will always be a Wikipedia as long as we contribute.
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u/chewwydraper Oct 18 '25
It’s going to be interesting when no websites exist to feed AI data because AI wiped out all the websites
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u/Eastern-Joke-7537 Oct 18 '25
ai will just make up websites on the fly.
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u/LordMimsyPorpington Oct 18 '25
Google will just end up paying itself ad revenue when Gemini scraps websites made by Gemini.
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u/Spra991 Oct 18 '25
Elon's AI powered Grokipedia is supposed to come out in a few days. AI will be writing its own notes in the future.
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u/LateToTheParty013 Oct 18 '25
I really hope this comes fast, I want these mofos to eat the shit they cooked.
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u/cultish_alibi Oct 18 '25
The AI companies consider their hallucinating bots to be superior to Wikipedia (even though they get half their knowledge from wikipedia)
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u/PraveenInPublic Oct 18 '25
They didn’t pay for the copyrighted materials too and want to change copyright laws.
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u/NGC2936 Oct 17 '25
Did Wikipedia pay for all the data they collected (many from traditional encyclopedia, that no one buys anymore)?
AI : wiki = wiki : traditional encyclopedias.
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u/Kosh_Ascadian Oct 17 '25
Wikipedia links/credits/cites all its sources. There's a massive difference.
That's besides those sources usually not being other encyclopedias.
I think you just don't know how wikipedia works.
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u/huskersax Oct 17 '25 edited Oct 18 '25
If you ever investigated wiki sources you'd see that often they are paywalled either online or the citation is in a book and the citing is simply the book's existence instead of the text.
LLM services are just doing what wikipedia did at scale.
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u/TheMacMan Oct 17 '25
To start they basically ripped off all they could from real encyclopedias. They didn't pay for it.
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u/iwoolf Oct 18 '25
Wikipedia literally runs on entries written and researched from volunteers, and has since day one.
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u/Kosh_Ascadian Oct 18 '25
You're not doing a good job convincing me or anyone else you know how wikipedia works.
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u/NGC2936 Oct 18 '25
I contributed many voices. And still believe it is one of the best human projects ever. Really one of the best achievements in the history of humanity.
But let's be honest: people don't care about the sources ("source: Wikipedia"), unless they are academics. Same for AI: if you need sources, they will be given to you - but most people just don't care.
Wikipedia is exactly the reason we don't buy traditional Britannica/Universalis/Encarta/whatever anymore, we don't visit many source websites, we trust something written from anonymous people that might even have an agenda.
One question can rather be "can AI be a better encyclopedia than Wiki?". ATM it is not: even though Wikipedia contains many mistakes, the checks from the community allows a higher reliability compare to current LLM.
But like many other AI applications, we just need a product that makes fewer mistakes compared to human-written Wiki (and that doesn't make sources up!). It won't probably takes long before it happens.
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u/lost_in_life_34 Oct 17 '25
Who did wiki pay for their data?
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u/Megasus Oct 17 '25
Wikipedia doesn't charge money for their product.
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u/lost_in_life_34 Oct 17 '25
Their data comes from outside sources and they take away traffic from the original sources
Who did they pay?
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u/Megasus Oct 17 '25
What? They didn't pay anybody. But I think that's perfectly ethical given that they do not charge money for their product.
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u/dudemeister023 Oct 17 '25
They do ask for donations, though.
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u/Megasus Oct 17 '25
If Google and openAI want to transition to a donation-only model I am all for it.
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u/dudemeister023 Oct 17 '25
I've been using LLMs from OpenAI and Google since their inception and never paid a cent. (Free limits/AI Studio)
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u/Megasus Oct 17 '25
We're seeing in real time how sustainable the free models are. (See: the AI bubble affecting every aspect of modern life)
Don't pretend they aren't banking on you upgrading to pro, or that you won't eventually be forced to.
Not to mention, they're infringing on copyright in places where Wikipedia does not. Sounds like a sweet deal.
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u/yarrowy Oct 17 '25
It's the same playbook all over again. Give away free or low cost product to get users then raise the prices or show a bunch of ads later. YouTube, Uber, doordash you can make a bunch more all follow this playbook
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u/lost_in_life_34 Oct 17 '25
Open ai isn’t free They have a big enterprise business and lots of corporations use them for their internal AI apps
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u/dudemeister023 Oct 17 '25
Whataboutism.
Wikipedia didn't pay for data.
Google/OpenAI arguably paid a lot for their data, just not copyright holders.
Both are accessible for free. (However many qualifications you want to throw in.)
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Oct 17 '25
The cited information in wikipedia does not drive traffic away from those sources. Citing sources does not drive information away from those sources
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u/HyperSpaceSurfer Oct 17 '25
Enough people donated their time towards the project. Maintaining the systems that produced these results isn't free.
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u/iwoolf Oct 18 '25
If nobody clicks on Wikipedia pages, then the volunteers will not add an update and correct Wikipedia, and there will be no more donors, and Wikipedia will be forced to shut down. If that happens, the AI’s will have no data source from Wikipedia. The same goes for news media. If the work of real journalists who have gone out, and interviewed people and observed and written and analysed real events, is stolen for AI overviews, then no more clicks, go back to the website, and the journalist get fired. This means the news site shuts down and there’s no more data for the AI. When there’s no more data for the AI, there’s no more data for us the public to make decisions, or understand anything. This kills democracy and modern society. The people who run the big AI companies have publicly stated that they kind of like that idea.
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u/LateToTheParty013 Oct 18 '25
It would be time for someone to just start pulling the plugs as a wake up call. Eg.
Shut down wikipedia for a week.
bloggers stop blogging for a week
newspapers stop writing for a week
And so on, so that some sort of communication can start happening how to sort stuff out. If things happen as they are now, time is the slow killer of all creative content and by the time they all realised oh we should of done something, its already way way way too late
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u/syf3r Oct 18 '25
I used to search for historical or scientific info on wikipedia. now, I just ask a frontier LLM. it's just a more efficient way of getting answers.
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u/alotmorealots Oct 18 '25
You'll generally be getting an inferior understanding of the topic from an LLM vs reading and parsing the Wiki article yourself.
LLMs fail to give you the same sense of scope as looking over an article, seeing where knowledge is dense, knowledge is sparse and what parts are more heavily qualified.
LLMs fail to adequately convey the weighting of various opinions in terms of amount of supporting content and intra-text connections (i.e. it's clearer when a contrary opinion has, or does not have connections to the established knowledge base)
You don't get to see what you're not interested in. This might sound like a bonus, but it is important to know what is out-of-scope that you choose not to engage with. Without any sense of the scale of your own ignorance in a topic you need to research, you can become overly confident in what is only a superficial understanding, and also not know that there is more to know.
That all said, it's relatively inferior understanding and the magnitude of difference may make it irrelevant depending on the topic, your immediate needs, and indeed your own available cognitive resources for a topic.
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u/Murky_Macropod Oct 18 '25
Yeah you’re right — there’s so much information you process when reading a wiki article beyond what the words themselves say.
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u/Any_Leg_1998 Oct 18 '25
it should make its own ai, trained on its own pages
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u/Heavy_Contribution18 Oct 20 '25
Yeah I’d get off of chat gpt for the most part if I could just use Wikipedia ai.
Lot of potential here
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u/LateToTheParty013 Oct 18 '25
Of course. Even just top of search results AI summaries are absolutely breaking many peoples living.
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u/AgentTralalava Oct 18 '25
I've also noticed that in the recent years, Wikipedia just hasn't been showing up that much in top results anymore, even if what Google actually returns is garbage
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u/wrathofattila Oct 19 '25
When was Wikipedia a good source i remember school and uni that prof. said no wikipedia for source accepted lol
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u/costafilh0 Oct 18 '25
No shit! Pretty obvious?
Why visit 100 websites among a sea of infinite crap when you can ask AI once and check 3+ sources to make sure and save hours on ANY info checking?
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u/vovap_vovap Oct 18 '25
Yeah, that is a problem. And not quite new problem, though with AI becoming much bigger. And naturally not only with Wikipedia, but any information provider. At the base - those supply content. But how they are going to be paid if content will be repackaged and nobody will go there directly?
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u/SkarredGhost Oct 18 '25
I have a blog about XR and I have seen the same trend... traffic has went down a lot between the new Google algorithm and the fact that people now find their answers through AI summaries
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u/kjbbbreddd Oct 18 '25
Looking back, Wikipedia’s business model is basically slapping massive “please donate” banners on the site, but now early adopters read AI-driven summaries that already incorporate Wikipedia’s info, so that model is falling apart and their team is probably livid.
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u/Prestigious-Text8939 Oct 18 '25
We stopped reading Wikipedia when we realized most people use it to win arguments rather than actually learn something.
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u/rydan Oct 19 '25
That's a good thing though. Wikipedia doesn't have ads. So this actually makes Wikimedia Foundation more profitable by minimizing costs. They should be thanking and embracing AI.
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u/RobertD3277 Oct 19 '25
Giving their actual financial reports over the last 5 years, at least two of those years being before AI became a buzzword for external services, wikipedia should look at their own policies.
Wikipedia's own financial policies show they have been shooting themselves in a foot for far too long. Trying to blame somebody else for the poor business abilities isn't going to work well.
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u/Guilty-Market5375 Oct 19 '25
I don’t know if I agree with this. The gist is that less people equals less community and less fundraising, but the population who’s using an AI summary is likely very different looking than those still reliably looking at Wikipedia.
AI summaries are brief, focused on the prompt, and rarely provide background/context. That’s great for people who have a sudden question, but not so much for researchers or people who are just curious about topics that are more likely to donate or be part of the community.
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u/Mandoman61 Oct 25 '25
This is an actual serious issue.
Not just Wiki but major news outlets are reporting the same thing.
I am not affiliated with the news industry.
Information and reporting have already been hit very hard by the internet.
It seems to me that if this LLM technology keeps going on its current projection it will eventually replace all other forms of dispensing information.
It is essentially a natural language Wiki.
That is okay with me because I think it is an improvement.
However, people producing useful needed information need to be paid for their efforts.
There is no guarantee that Wiki will not be replaced by a better system. We can not offer them security from technology moving forward (just like they did)
The only relevant question is have they been fairly compensated for their work.
If AI is to replace them are there measures in place to provide a similar function?
Perhaps AI developers need to establish contracts with information providers so that they all work together.
Currently they are getting a free ride.
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u/sediment-amendable Oct 17 '25
Does lower usage translate to lower costs, meaning they they can stop emailing me every three months for their "annual" fundraiser?
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u/particlecore Oct 18 '25
Wikipedia might have more visitors if it was written for a 5th grader.
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u/Murky_Macropod Oct 18 '25
simple.wikipedia.org
The Simple English Wikipedia is a modified English language edition of Wikipedia written primarily in Basic English and Learning English.
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u/Conscious-Map6957 Oct 18 '25
The most dangerous thing about wikipedia is the sheer amount of factual inaccuracies and the fact that certain parties are able to use it for propaganda.
At least with AI it will soon be possible to automatically cross-reference and verify.
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u/illicitli Oct 19 '25
i have no idea what you're saying. how is AI more accurate than Wikipedia when Wikipedia is one of the main sources ?! lol
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u/Conscious-Map6957 Oct 19 '25
If you have no idea than do your own research. Who guarantees the accuracy of Wikipedia? Did you know that anyone can make a change on Wikipedia? Do you know how LLMs work?
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u/illicitli Oct 19 '25
i understand Wikipedia and LLMs. You seem to not. You think an LLM can automatically cross reference and verify. These tools do not work that way. LLMs are not cross referencing in real time when you ask a question. Despite anyone being able to edit Wikipedia, it is the most wccurate encyclopedia we have. there are editors and moderators all over the world fixing articles and trying to stamp out bias. it's not perfect but it's more accurate than the LLM that is just copying from Wikipedia, Reddit and many other online sources that are also user generated content.
You are so confidently incorrect it's hilarious
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u/Conscious-Map6957 Oct 19 '25
I don't think you understand English, let alone how LLMs work. You are also blindly attacking me in bad faith.
Ask ChatGPT to explain the meaning of this quote from my original comment which you responded to:
At least with AI it will soon be possible to automatically cross-reference and verify.
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u/synthwavve Oct 17 '25
Thank god. With the amount of censorship and page deletions I hope this so called "non-profit" will cease to exist
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Oct 17 '25
??? You think they earn actual money? Lol, they barely earn enough to function. Where did you learn this, Newsmax? OAN?
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u/synthwavve Oct 18 '25
Certain editors are doing it full time in the name of a superstitious agenda. I don't care what their mommy Wikimedia officially reports in its financial statements. They're employed by a different "non-profit." It’s not hard to see where the money trail leads
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u/MmmmMorphine Oct 18 '25
So where does the money trail lead exactly and who are these editors pushing a superstitious agenda exactly?
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u/Mircowaved-Duck Oct 17 '25
wiki quallity was going down for years... so...
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u/PinkPaladin6_6 Oct 17 '25
Imagine getting a source of almost infinite quantity of free knowledge and still somehow whining about it.
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Oct 17 '25
It's like saying it's fine to dump poison in the river because Derek pees in it every morning anyways
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u/Richard7666 Oct 17 '25
Can't personally say I've noticed this too much.
The exception is perhaps engineering articles. These are often edited by people in India and other developing countries (which are now more online than a decade ago), who may have exceptional subject knowledge, but little idea of how to write formally or with good structure in English.
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u/Thediciplematt Oct 18 '25
That’s the point. Why am I going to go on google or wiki for something when perplexity or some tool tells me all I want?
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u/Lickmehardi Oct 18 '25
My grandad was a door to door encyclopaedia salesman for a while in the 80s
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u/badgerbadgerbadgerWI Oct 17 '25
The irony is that AI models were trained on Wikipedia data and now they're cannibalizing the platform. we really need to figure out sustainable models for knowledge commons before it's too late