Wikipedia is experiencing a decline in human page views, dropping approximately 8% year-on-year. This decrease is attributed to the rise of AI-generated search summaries and the increasing popularity of social video platforms for information retrieval. Search engines now provide direct answers, often sourced from Wikipedia, reducing the need for users to click through to the site. Younger users are also turning to platforms like TikTok and YouTube Shorts for quick explanations.
The Wikimedia Foundation warns that this decline could discourage volunteers from contributing and donors from providing financial support. Fewer visits to Wikipedia could threaten the site's standards of verifiability, neutrality, and transparency. The increasing sophistication of AI bot crawlers also strains the platform's resources and increases hosting costs.
To combat this, Wikipedia suggests that LLMs and search results should provide more opportunities for users to directly interact with the original sources. They also call for AI firms and digital platforms to be more transparent about where their information comes from and to support their sources. Wikipedia had previously considered using AI-generated summaries but abandoned the project due to backlash from volunteer editors.
