The Wikimedia Foundation announced the launch of a strategy for using generative AI over the next three years — without replacing the volunteer editor community. The organization plans to use AI to create new features that will remove technical barriers for users and allow them to focus on content rather than routine tasks. The emphasis is on automating repetitive tasks — from translating texts and onboarding newcomers to optimizing information search in Wikipedia.
The Wikimedia Foundation’s approach deserves special attention — here, it is emphasized that AI will become a tool to simplify editors’ work, not replace them. The foundation stresses the priority of human involvement, open source, and transparency in the use of models. Generative AI will help relieve editors of some of their workload, so they can devote more time to discussions and decision-making about changes to the encyclopedia.
It is known that AI is already used to detect vandalism, translate content, and assess readability, but only now are tools becoming available to editors themselves. The Wikimedia Foundation also recently announced the creation of an open database of Wikipedia’s structured content, which will be useful for the development of machine learning.
The foundation notes that the amount of information in the world is rapidly increasing, and the burden on volunteers is only intensifying. At the same time, the growth in bot traffic, which massively collects data from Wikipedia, has already led to a nearly fifty percent increase in resource consumption. All this is pushing for new solutions, and generative AI may be the key to effectively supporting the encyclopedia’s human community.
