Key Takeaways:
- Wikipedia has signed new licensing deals with AI companies including Amazon, Meta Platforms, Perplexity, Microsoft, and France’s Mistral AI to monetize its content.
- The nonprofit organization behind Wikipedia is working with AI companies to provide them with access to its vast repository of free knowledge at a volume and speed designed specifically for their needs.
- Wikipedia’s founder, Jimmy Wales, welcomes AI training on the site’s data, but emphasizes that companies should pay for their fair share of the cost.
- The Wikimedia Foundation has outlined an AI strategy that could result in tools to reduce tedious work for editors and improve the search experience.
- Wikipedia is facing criticism from figures on the political right, who accuse the site of being biased in favor of the left, and is under investigation by Republican lawmakers in the U.S. Congress.
Introduction to Wikipedia’s New Business Deals
Wikipedia, the online crowdsourced encyclopedia, has unveiled new business deals with several artificial intelligence companies as it marks its 25th anniversary. The nonprofit organization behind the site has signed licensing agreements with Amazon, Meta Platforms, Perplexity, Microsoft, and France’s Mistral AI, among others. This move aims to monetize the site’s vast repository of free knowledge, which has been used by AI companies to train their large language models. As Jimmy Wales, Wikipedia’s founder, said, "I’m very happy personally that AI models are training on Wikipedia data because it’s human curated… I wouldn’t really want to use an AI that’s trained only on X, you know, like a very angry AI."
The Rise of AI and Its Impact on Wikipedia
The rise of artificial intelligence has raised questions about who ultimately pays for the AI boom. Aggressive data collection methods by AI developers, including from Wikipedia’s vast repository of free knowledge, have sparked concerns about the site’s infrastructure and funding. As Maryana Iskander, CEO of the Wikimedia Foundation, pointed out, "Our infrastructure is not free, right? It costs money to maintain servers and other infrastructure that allows both individuals and tech companies to draw data from Wikipedia." The foundation has urged AI developers to pay for access to the site’s content through its enterprise platform, citing the heavy traffic from bots that are taxing its servers.
Wikipedia’s AI Strategy
The Wikimedia Foundation has outlined an AI strategy that could result in tools to reduce tedious work for editors and improve the search experience. According to Wales, AI could be used to update dead links by scanning the surrounding text and searching online for other sources. He also envisions a future where the Wikipedia search box can respond to questions in a chatbot style, providing users with relevant information from the site’s vast repository of knowledge. As Wales said, "You can imagine a world where you can ask the Wikipedia search box a question and it will quote to you from Wikipedia… That sounds really useful to me, and so I think we’ll move in that direction as well."
Criticisms and Challenges
Wikipedia has faced criticism from figures on the political right, who accuse the site of being biased in favor of the left. Republican lawmakers in the U.S. Congress are investigating alleged "manipulation efforts" in Wikipedia’s editing process, which they claim could inject bias and undermine neutral points of view on the platform. Elon Musk, who launched his own AI-powered rival, Grokipedia, has also criticized Wikipedia for being filled with "propaganda" and urged people to stop donating to the site. However, Wales remains confident that Wikipedia’s model of human-curated content will prevail, saying that large language models "aren’t good enough to write really quality reference material."
Reflections on Wikipedia’s 25th Anniversary
As Wikipedia marks its 25th anniversary, Wales reflected on the early days of the internet, which he described as a "thrilling time" of great excitement and possibility. However, he also acknowledged that the early days of the internet had a dark side, with people being "pretty toxic" towards each other. Despite the challenges and criticisms, Wikipedia remains one of the most popular websites on the internet, with over 65 million articles in 300 languages edited by some 250,000 volunteers. As Wales said, "It was a time of great excitement and a real spirit of possibility… We didn’t need algorithms to be mean to each other, but it was a time of great possibility."
https://www.wral.com/news/ap/50e79-wikipedia-unveils-new-ai-licensing-deals-as-it-marks-25th-birthday/