Wikimedia is sounding the alarm on the influence AI is having on dependable information and knowledge on the web. In a weblog put up, Wikimedia's senior director of product, Marshall Miller, lays out the influence on web page views that the muse attributes to the rise of LLM chatbots and AI-generated summaries in search outcomes.
"We imagine that these declines mirror the influence of generative AI and social media on how individuals search data, particularly with engines like google offering solutions on to searchers, usually primarily based on Wikipedia content material," stated Miller.
The muse has more and more confronted AI bot crawlers whose sophistication has made it troublesome to parse human visitors from bots. After enhancing bot detection to yield extra correct metrics, Wikipedia's knowledge exhibits an 8 p.c drop in web page views yr over yr.
Miller paints an image of an existential threat larger than that of a web site's web page views. He posits that if Wikipedia's visitors continues to say no, it might threaten what he calls "the one web site of its scale with requirements of verifiability, neutrality and transparency powering data all around the web." He warns that fewer visits to Wikipedia would result in fewer volunteers, much less funding and in the end much less dependable content material.
The answer he presents is for LLMs and search outcomes to be extra intentional in giving customers the chance to work together instantly with the supply for the knowledge being introduced. "For individuals to belief data shared on the web, platforms ought to make it clear the place the knowledge is sourced from and elevate alternatives to go to and take part in these sources," Miller writes.
Earlier this summer time, Wikipedia floated the concept of AI-generated summaries that would seem on the high of articles. The venture was in the end dropped earlier than it started after fierce backlash from the location's volunteer editors.
This text initially appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/ai/wikimedia-says-ai-bots-and-summaries-are-hurting-wikipedias-traffic-134331033.html?src=rss