Wikipedia’s New AI Strategy Empowers Volunteers to Focus on Content Creation

Our New AI Strategy: Putting Wikipedia's Human Volunteers First The community of volunteers behind Wikipedia is the cornerstone of its enduring success. For nearly 25 years, these dedicated individuals have researched, deliberated, discussed, built consensus, and collaboratively written the largest encyclopedia ever created. Their dedication to ensuring the reliability and depth of the content is unparalleled and remains something that artificial intelligence (AI) cannot replicate. This is why our new AI strategy emphasizes the role of these human volunteers. We are committed to using AI to support and empower them, rather than supplant their contributions. The focus will be on developing features that eliminate technical hurdles, enabling volunteers to focus their time and energy on what truly matters: enhancing and expanding the encyclopedic knowledge that Wikipedia provides. Our approach to incorporating AI is not just about the technologies we use, but also how we implement them. Guided by long-held values such as privacy, human rights, and transparency, our strategy will prioritize human agency and open-source solutions. We aim to create unique opportunities that will elevate Wikipedia's volunteer community. This includes: Removing Technical Barriers: By automating routine tasks and simplifying complex processes, volunteers will have more time to engage in higher-value editorial activities. Open-Source AI: We will favor AI models that are open-source or have open weights, ensuring that the tools we develop are transparent and can be scrutinized and improved upon by the broader community. Transparency: All AI-driven features will be clearly documented and communicated, so users understand how and why they are being used. Nuanced Multilinguality: Recognizing the diverse linguistic landscape of Wikipedia, we will take a careful and context-aware approach to multilingual support, ensuring that all languages benefit equitably. Wikipedia's mission is to provide freely accessible knowledge to everyone on the planet. This mission has become even more crucial in the era of generative AI, which often relies heavily on the vast repository of content available on Wikipedia. With our new AI strategy, we reaffirm our commitment to the world and to the volunteers who have shaped—and continue to shape—Wikipedia into the most comprehensive and trustworthy source of information. To learn more about the Wikimedia Foundation’s detailed AI strategy, you can visit Meta-Wiki. — Chris Albon, the Director of Machine Learning at the Wikimedia Foundation, and Leila Zia, the Head of Research, are leading this initiative. Follow Chris on Twitter at @chrisalbon for updates and insights.