The Wikimedia Foundation, which operates Wikipedia, announced new measures to ensure the sustainability of the world’s largest online encyclopedia in the AI era. In a blog post, the foundation called on AI developers to access and attribute Wikipedia’s content responsibly through its Wikimedia Enterprise product — a paid, opt-in service that enables large-scale use of data without overloading its servers and directly supports the organization’s nonprofit mission.
The announcement follows the discovery that AI bots had been scraping Wikipedia while disguising themselves as human users, inflating traffic and contributing to an 8% year-over-year decline in human visits. The foundation emphasized that proper attribution is vital for maintaining transparency, encouraging user participation, and sustaining donations that fund volunteer-driven content creation.
Wikipedia also reaffirmed its own AI initiatives aimed at assisting editors with translation and routine tasks, reinforcing that AI will be used to support, not replace, human contributors.
