Wikipedia Now Funded By Meta, Microsoft, Perplexity, And More A.I. Companies

[RAMROD 117,958]

As generative AI companies search for cleaner training data, one of the internet's oldest institutions is quietly changing its economic model. The Wikimedia Foundation, which operates Wikipedia, has confirmed new agreements with major AI players, including Amazon, Meta, Microsoft, Mistral AI, and Perplexity. The deals formalize paid access to the encyclopedia's vast information trove – content that has long functioned as both an open resource and a magnet for automated web scrapers.

The foundation said the contracts give participating companies access to structured Wikipedia data at scales and speeds tailored to their requirements. The organization did not disclose financial terms. Even so, the move marks a turning point for one of the world's most visited websites, shifting from a model mainly built on small donations toward commercial partnerships with companies developing the next generation of large language models.

Foundation executives say this strategy is a response to soaring technical demands on the network. Automated scraping – often disguised as regular traffic – has intensified as AI developers harvest online text for model training. As a result, the load on Wikipedia's servers has grown significantly, even as human readership has fallen by roughly eight percent over the past year.

Wikimedia operates one of the internet's most complex server ecosystems, hosting more than 65 million articles across roughly 300 languages, edited by about 250,000 volunteers. Wikimedia Foundation Chief Executive Officer Maryana Iskander told The Associated Press that maintaining the data infrastructure supporting both human readers and machine access comes at a significant cost.

"Our infrastructure is not free," Iskander said. "It costs money to maintain servers and other infrastructure that allows both individuals and tech companies to draw data from Wikipedia."

Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales has welcomed the partnerships as a practical solution. He argued that models trained on Wikipedia benefit from its human editing process, which filters out misinformation and enforces verification standards.

"I'm happy that AI models are training on Wikipedia because it's human-curated," he said, adding that "[AI firms] should chip in and pay for their share of the cost that [they're] putting on us."

https://www.techspot.com/news/110952-wikipedia-now-getting-paid-meta-microsoft-perplexity-other.html

[RAMROD 117,958]

I guess they're no longer independent now  

[Guest]

Misinformation is gonna be amazing. Can we all die already?

[LaLa 19,902]

I really don't know how to feel about this 

I suppose it's fair that if companies are scraping it anyway they should pay, but it still makes me very uneasy... I guess they can't survive on my $10 year or whatever, but... damn 

 

[Guest]

Does this mean they'll stop harassing us for what seems like 5 times a year for donations?

[Lucas 31,478]

I'm expecting things to suddenly become politically biased towards the opinions of a side known for its propaganda and lies

[weed 79,278]

give me my $3 back 

[Roughhouse Dandy 13,850]

Lmao everything is awful and its only getting worse 🙃 

[Phoenix Fields 2,714]

1 hour ago, elsamars said:

Misinformation is gonna be amazing. Can we all die already?

This. 

I really hope schools and colleges start teaching people how to do independent and bliographical research the right way.

[SevenWonder 4,775]

So now Grok will decide what happened in some world war.

Gee, what could possibly go wrong?

[gagzus 24,760]

How long is it gonna be till they allow the public to change info without fact checking for a price lmao

[gagzus 24,760]

12 minutes ago, Westerosi said:

This. 

I really hope schools and colleges start teaching people how to do independent and bliographical research the right way.

They have been trying but since ChatGPT became big, almost every student uses it now and just changes it enough to avoid markers picking up on it.

The funny thing is, Wikipedia hasn’t been reliable for years, I mean look how many years they said Gaga was from Yonkers  and no matter how much she would get it changed they changed it back.

Slightly off-topic; it absolutely KILLS me that most people’s Wiki pages say “Parents” but some petty fan only has Cynthia as Gaga’s and has no mention of Joe nnn

[Alxjcgn 2,252]

1 hour ago, Westerosi said:

This. 

I really hope schools and colleges start teaching people how to do independent and bliographical research the right way.

As a teacher I pushed this so much and taught kids that simply reading an AI response is not making you an expert whatsoever, and you're just memorizing facts without context or the ability to understand and critically think about them. I really advocate for banning AI use in schools... I don't care if its "easier", it makes people stupid and way too confident when they shouldn't be

[Nemo 4,414]

Basically, the AI companies were stealing Wikipedia's content already anyway, and making licensing deals was cheaper for everyone than pursuing a bunch of lawsuits. It doesn't have to mean they'll have any effect on Wikipedia or control over it. Hopefully they won't.

This is about information flowing from Wikipedia into the AIs, not the other way.

 

[PartySick 174,178]

31 minutes ago, Nemo said:

Basically, the AI companies were stealing Wikipedia's content already anyway, and making licensing deals was cheaper for everyone than pursuing a bunch of lawsuits. It doesn't have to mean they'll have any effect on Wikipedia or control over it. Hopefully they won't.

This is about information flowing from Wikipedia into the AIs, not the other way.

 

Yeah, I'm not sure why anyone's freaked about this.

Besides, nearly everything on Wikipedia links to a source and if it doesn't then it's not really worth citing that particular statement. I thought we all learned this in high school