Wikimedia says AI bots and summaries are hurting Wikipedia's traffic

Wikimedia, the organization behind Wikipedia, is raising concerns about the impact of AI bots and AI-generated summaries on the platform's traffic. According to the blog post by Wikimedia's senior director of product, Marshall Miller, the foundation has observed an 8% drop in page views year-over-year, which it attributes to the rise of language model chatbots and AI-generated summaries in search results. Miller warns that if the decline in Wikipedia's traffic continues, it could threaten the platform's ability to maintain its standards of verifiability, neutrality, and transparency, which are crucial for the reliability of information on the internet. He suggests that platforms should be more intentional in giving users the opportunity to interact directly with the original sources of information, rather than relying solely on AI-generated summaries. Earlier this year, Wikipedia had proposed the idea of introducing AI-generated summaries at the top of articles, but the project was ultimately abandoned due to fierce backlash from the site's volunteer editors. The article emphasizes the need to strike a balance between the benefits of AI and the preservation of reliable, transparent, and community-driven knowledge platforms like Wikipedia.