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Wikipedia Turns 25, Confronts AI-Era Headwinds

Volunteer editors face shrinking traffic and sparse industry payments for large-scale reuse by chatbots.

Overview

  • The encyclopedia now spans more than 65 million articles across 300-plus languages, supported by roughly 250,000 active volunteers.
  • Visits fell by about a quarter from 2022 to 2025, a drop linked to users turning to AI answers, which also reduces exposure to donation appeals.
  • Major AI models draw heavily on Wikipedia, yet Wikimedia Enterprise has few disclosed paying customers, with Google the only one named.
  • Wikimedia’s 2025 policy bars generative AI from writing articles, and volunteers have launched an “AI Cleanup” effort as the Foundation reports bots account for a large share of server traffic.
  • Leadership rejects claims of ideological capture as Elon Musk promotes Grokipedia, which Wikimedia figures criticize as biased on contentious topics.