Wikipedia Warns of Existential AI Threat as Page Views Fall 8% Due to Chatbot Summaries

According to the Wikimedia Foundation, the rapid rise of artificial intelligence poses a profound threat to the integrity of online knowledge and the broader information ecosystem. Wikipedia’s page views have fallen by 8% year over year, a decline attributed largely to the popularity of large language model chatbots and AI-generated summaries in search results.

Marshall Miller, Senior Director of Product at the Wikimedia Foundation, revealed in an official blog post that this trend stems from how people seek information when search engines provide direct answers based on Wikipedia content. He warned that if the trend continues, it could jeopardise the site as a large-scale platform upholding verifiability, neutrality and transparency.

The piece notes that a continued drop in referral traffic could lead to fewer volunteer contributors, diminished financial support and a decline in content reliability. Earlier this summer, Wikipedia considered adding AI-generated summaries at the top of articles, but the plan was abandoned after opposition from volunteer editors, highlighting tensions between AI efficiency and human curation.