Wikipedia and Artificial intelligence
Artificial intelligence can have a major influence on how Wikipedia will be used by writers, readers, and machines.
Built by the community
[edit]Wikimedia Belgium, like other affiliates, cannot be directly involved in how Wikipedia works, its content, nor in the way in which the content is produced. Even the Wikimedia Foundation has no rights in this regard. How Wikipedia is written and the determination of its content is a role reserved exclusively for the Wikimedia community, all 270,000 (?) volunteers worldwide. It is even more restrictive: each Wikipedia language has its own rules, based on the five pillars.
Writers
[edit]Artificial intelligence (AI) influencing the content of Wikipedia might not be the greatest danger. Every Wikipedian, even if AI might be initially used individually to generate a draft version of a text, is expected to rework every piece of text before it is published on Wikipedia. Ultimately, every volunteer is responsible for their own contributions. I refer to the extremely interesting Who Wrote That tool and the importance of citing sources. Clear AI generated text is removed.
Decrease
[edit]The number of active volunteers is decreasing, after a peak in 2007, except for e.g. wp.es and wp.fr due to the contributions of the Global South.
This can have a risk for artificial intelligence to fall short of new content, because Wikipedia is a major feed for AI models.
Readers
[edit]A greater risk is that Wikipedia will no longer be read (directly), because individual readers will fall back to asking questions to ChatGPT, Gemini, Copilot, Duck.ai. Even the related search engines Google, Bing, DuckDuckGo, etc. will be less often used. Wikidata and Wikipedia also run the risk of no longer being consulted directly, but only through AI platforms.
One important risk here is that individuals, if they only use AI, will only read filtered information and will no longer think critically, or check sources themselves. Artificial intelligence is known to generate biased information, untrue facts, or fake references. Several AI systems don't even deliver references.
Machines
[edit]Overall bot activity is growing. With growing machine activity, and fewer human writers, there is a risk for unpatroled content.
Copyright issues
[edit]Copyright isn't respected by AI systems, so AI generated content can't be used on Wikipedia.