"We're not asking for charity": Wikimedia CEO calls out AI for unpaid data use

Wikipedia's popularity is waning as artificial intelligence (AI) becomes increasingly adept at finding information, according to Wikimedia Foundation CEO Bernadette Meehan. Page views have dropped by 8% in the most recent year, a decline that Meehan acknowledges but does not downplay. Wikipedia is a critical source of information for AI models, yet the very AI systems that rely on it are also providing people with Wikipedia-derived information without ever visiting the site. This could potentially undermine the ecosystem that supports the online encyclopedia's operations.

The issue is that generative AI systems depend heavily on Wikipedia's vast collection of human-created information, but not all companies are willing to pay for this use. While Wikimedia has a program that charges large-scale commercial users for reliable, high-volume access to its data, OpenAI and Anthropic, two of the largest developers of generative AI models, are not among its publicly disclosed enterprise customers.

Meehan, who took over as Wikimedia's CEO in January, noted that the response from major technology companies has been mixed, with some accepting their responsibility in sustaining Wikipedia and others acknowledging the excessive use of its data but declining to pay for enterprise access.

Meehan emphasized that Wikipedia does not ask for charity and highlighted the economic tension surrounding the issue. Roughly 80% of the organization's operating budget comes from small donations, many prompted by banners shown to visitors to its site. The drop in readership could lead to fewer conversions to editors, weakening the human and financial ecosystem that supports Wikipedia.

Meehan insisted that AI should assist human Wikipedia editors rather than replace them, stating that she does not foresee AI writing or generating Wikipedia articles. The organization remains committed to being the backbone of the information ecosystem, with plans to continue being written by humans for humans.