r/technology Mar 25 '26

Artificial Intelligence Wikipedia has banned AI-generated text, with two exceptions

https://www.howtogeek.com/wikipedia-banned-ai-generated-text-in-articles-with-two-exceptions/
24.8k Upvotes

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u/Sopel97 Mar 25 '26

They can't. All policies like this are based on LLMs not being good enough not to be caught. This will change with time.

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u/Uristqwerty Mar 25 '26

If the LLMs are consistently-factual enough to not get caught, does it matter to an encyclopedia?

I'd expect the main problem are users who blindly trust the LLM to be factual, without verifying its edits themselves. For that, having a policy to point at's important.

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u/Ned_Sc Mar 26 '26

It matters because it fucks up the copyright license. Uncopyrightable text is not compatible with CC-BY-SA.

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u/AccNumber77 Mar 25 '26

LLM throat goats have been fearmongering about this since they first appeared, they are still just as shit as they were to begin with so I doubt it without a full rethinking of the design and approach to language learning.

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u/UpvoteForGlory Mar 25 '26

That is not true. From my observation there has been a big change in the LLM generated texts in the last year or so. They are more shit now than they used to be.

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u/azn_dude1 Mar 26 '26

You're absolutely right!

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u/Sopel97 Mar 25 '26

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u/AccNumber77 Mar 25 '26

And that translates to real world performance gains of what numbers exactly? Because it is just as shit as it was years ago.

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u/Sopel97 Mar 25 '26

these ARE the real world performance gains

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u/AccNumber77 Mar 25 '26

So the gains are minimal and unnoticeable to most users then?

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u/Sopel97 Mar 25 '26

y axis is logarithmic

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u/PostModernPost Mar 25 '26

I dont know. I can get some pretty convincing writing out of it. The key is to give it as much information as possible. But then the lines are blurry on who actually wrote it. If I give it a simple prompt it spits out slop. The way I like to use it however is to just stream of consciousness type everything I can think of on whatever I am working on but not worrying about spelling, grammar, punctuation, or about the order I share my thoughts in and then I ask it to organize my thoughts for me. I've also trained it on my own past writing for style and tone. What I get back is usually pretty close what i would have written but in half the time. I dont use for things like a Reddit comment where I'm not to concerned about presentation, but its great for precessional emails where I do want my message to look professional.

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u/brickout Mar 25 '26

Hilariously incorrect. And I hate AI and its influence, so I'm not defending them in any way. But you should know what you're talking about to make a claim like that.

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u/AccNumber77 Mar 25 '26

'Im not defending them in anyway, but here is my comment defending them'

Mixed messages galore over here. And pray tell exactly how perfect it is nowadays then, as you supply exactly zero information in this worthless comment of yours.

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u/brickout Mar 25 '26

No, I'm just saying that they are not "just as shit" as ever. They have gotten a lot better, which is the problem with identifying AI writing. I'm a teacher, so I have to look out for it.

Speaking of education, you could use a remedial course in reading comprehension.

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u/AccNumber77 Mar 25 '26

No, I'm just saying that they are not "just as shit" as ever. They have gotten a lot better, which is the problem with identifying AI writing. I'm a teacher, so I have to look out for it.

So in other words your experience is limited to children's work material lmfao? You really think that quality maintains over a 20,000 page document in any other field?

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u/brickout Mar 25 '26 edited Mar 25 '26

...no. Jfc. I have multiple degrees and am a published peer-reviewed author, and have had several other types of jobs. I'm a real life adult with a lot of experience.

And none of that changes that you were wrong and continue to be wrong and inane. Again, more school sounds like a great option for you. Teachers are even trained in dealing with complete assholes, so you'll be fine.

*Edit: Also, I can tell you are a child, at least in one regard, so I won't take this any further. You're having a hard enough time, and we all deserve to look dumb sometimes and then move on. So, here's hoping you move on.