How Wikipedia’s Editors Keep the Online Encyclopedia Human-Written
Ellia Lebleu is a founding member of the WikiProject AI Cleanup , a volunteer effort launched in 2023 to find and remove AI-generated material from Wikipedia that breaks the website’s guidelines. When the cleanup began, AI writing was often betrayed by conspicuous clichés. Today, the project’s volunteers are developing tools to detect subtler forms of machine-generated content and debating AI’s…
Wikipedia editors have been working hard to maintain the human touch in the online encyclopedia since the emergence of AI-generated material. In December 2023, a group of editors noticed strange articles with clichéd phrases and structures reminiscent of ChatGPT in 2023 and early 2024. This led to the creation of the WikiProject AI Cleanup, a volunteer initiative to remove AI-generated content from Wikipedia.
In 2025, the signs of AI writing became subtler, focusing on structural patterns like the "rule of three" and negative parallelisms. Editors also examine the overall article and check for multiple long articles created in a short time. AI citations have become a significant concern, with AI often generating incorrect or nonexistent sources. English Wikipedia recently banned editors from using large language models (LLMs) to generate articles.
According to Ellia Lebleu, a founding member of the WikiProject AI Cleanup, Pangram, an AI-detection company, flagged around 20% of new articles and drafts as AI-generated in late 2025. However, it's unclear whether this decline is due to improved policies or more powerful AI models that elude detection. Wikipedia is also exploring AI-based solutions, such as an AI source verifier and Paste Check, which flags text directly copied from AI chatbots.
Though the current prohibition on AI-generated content helps preserve Wikipedia's human-written identity, the future remains uncertain. As AI technology advances, there's a possibility that AI-generated articles could be reliable, raising questions about Wikipedia's credibility as a human-written encyclopedia.
Written by urgent.news from IEEE Spectrum's reporting — not their text. Machine-written — may contain errors; check the original before relying on it.
