Is ChatGPT Just Wikipedia-AI?
Generative AI has begun to pose a challenge to various fields, and it’s now making waves on online platforms too. Wikipedia is seeing a drop in its traffic, as many users are opting for ChatGPT and other AI tools for their information needs.
A blog post by Marshall Miller from the Wikimedia Foundation revealed that in the past few months, human views on Wikipedia decreased by 8% compared to the previous year during the same time frame.
This alarming trend became apparent when Wikipedia’s bot detection system indicated that a significant portion of the unusually high traffic from May to June was actually generated by bots designed to avoid detection.
Miller suggests that this decline reflects “the influence of generative AI and social media on how people search for information,” pointing out that “search engines directly provide answers to users, often relying on content from Wikipedia.”
It seems that, as younger generations turn to social video platforms, they are bypassing Wikipedia entirely for information. A report by Adobe Express conducted over the summer found that 77% of ChatGPT users view it as a search engine. Interestingly, about 30% of those users trust ChatGPT more than traditional search engines.
Despite these challenges, Miller believes that digital encyclopedias won’t fade into obscurity. “Almost all large-scale language models are trained on the Wikipedia dataset. Plus, search engines and social media often draw from that content to answer user queries,” he explains. This means that users may not need to visit Wikipedia to access the knowledge generated by its volunteers.
In an attempt to provide direct information, Wikipedia even experimented with AI summarization similar to Google’s—only to halt the effort after receiving complaints from editors.
Miller raised concerns about an AI-dominated landscape potentially obscuring the origins of information. He noted, “If access to Wikipedia decreases, then we could see fewer volunteers contributing and less financial support for this work.”
It’s not just Wikipedia feeling the impact of generative AI. According to a statement from DMG Media, the owner of MailOnline, AI Overview has led to an 89% drop in click-through rates on its site.
Moreover, as low-quality AI-generated content continues to spread, it’s affecting many sectors, including academia and law. Back in May, a California judge fined two law firms $31,000 for incorporating misleading AI content into their legal documents without appropriate verification.
