arstechnica.com
Due to industrial-scale AI scraping boosting infrastructure costs, Wikipedia is moving toward paid licensing. The Wikimedia Foundation reported a 50% surge in bandwidth usage since early 2024, with bots making up 65% of expensive requests.
Additionally, updated bot-detection systems revealed that human traffic had dropped by 8% as AI chatbots answer queries without directing users to the site, threatening the platform’s traditional funding and editing feedback loop. While founder Jimmy Wales supports AI training on Wikipedia’s curated data, he insists these companies must pay their fair share of hosting costs.
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