Wikipedia on Monday laid out a easy plan to make sure its web site continues to be supported within the AI period, regardless of its declining site visitors.
In a weblog submit, the Wikimedia Basis, the group that runs the favored on-line encyclopedia, referred to as on AI builders to make use of its content material “responsibly” by guaranteeing its contributions are correctly attributed and that content material is accessed by way of its paid product, the Wikimedia Enterprise platform.
The opt-in, paid product permits firms to make use of Wikipedia’s content material at scale with out “severely taxing Wikipedia’s servers,” the Wikimedia Basis weblog post explains. As well as, the product’s paid nature permits AI firms to help the group’s nonprofit mission.
Whereas the submit doesn’t go as far as to threaten penalties or any type of authorized motion to be used of its materials by way of scraping, Wikipedia just lately famous that AI bots had been scraping its web site whereas making an attempt to seem human. After updating its bot detection programs, the group discovered that its unusually excessive site visitors in Could and June had come from AI bots that have been making an attempt to “evade detection.” In the meantime, it stated that “human web page views” had declined 8% year-over-year.
Now, Wikipedia is laying out its pointers for AI builders and suppliers, saying that generative AI builders ought to present attribution to provide credit score to the human contributors whose content material it makes use of to create its outputs.
“For folks to belief data shared on the web, platforms ought to make it clear the place the data is sourced from and elevate alternatives to go to and take part in these sources,” the submit reads. “With fewer visits to Wikipedia, fewer volunteers might develop and enrich the content material, and fewer particular person donors might help this work.”
Earlier this yr, the group launched its AI strategy for editors, which stated it might use AI to assist editors with workflows round tedious duties, automating translation, and different instruments that assist its editors, not exchange them.
