Wikipedians Believed AI Would Come and Go. They Were Wrong
Wikipedia has implemented a ban on AI-generated content after finding that large language models were increasingly violating the platform's core principles. The decision reflects a broader concern among editors about the loss of human-curated knowledge.
Why it matters
This shift highlights the ongoing tension between the efficiency of generative AI and the need for human-verified accuracy in information ecosystems.
Already in 2018 Google was training AI to write “Wikipedia-like articles,” and by October 2024, a Princeton University study found that about 5 percent of nearly 3,000 newly created articles on English Wikipedia in a single month (August 2024) contained a substantial amount of AI-generated content. There were signs. ChatGPT was fond of em dashes—parenthetical statements that look like this one—and curly quotation marks. Sometimes, residues from the prompts used to compose articles were left behind (“Here is your Wikipedia article,” they might say.)
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