Wikipedia Visitors Drop Drastically Due To AI

The number of Wikipedia human visitors decreased (photo: dock. unsplash)

JAKARTA The Wikimedia Foundation stated that Wikipedia's number of visits has decreased in recent months. According to the agency, this is due to Artificial Intelligence (AI) technology.

The number of traffic or human page visits on the Wikipedia platform fell by 8 percent compared to last year. This decline was driven by user habits that changed in seeking information thanks to the progress of generative AI and social media.

Currently, there are many search engines that take advantage of the AI model, one of which is Google Search which presents AI Overview to summarize answers from various sites on Google. Although still linking the original source, user habits still change.

This shift in user behavior does not only occur on Wikipedia. Many publishers and other content platforms also report similar trends as users spend more time on AI chatbots and social media seeking information.

Although its human traffic has decreased, Wikimedia is optimistic that their platform is still needed. The reason is, Wikipedia is one of the data sets needed by many AI companies. Almost all Large Language Models (LLM) are trained using the Wikipedia dataset.

"Wikipedia is the only site on a scale like this with verification standards, neutrality, and transparency that supports information across the internet," the Wikimedia Foundation said, quoted on Tuesday, October 21.

Basically, Wikimedia supports the advancement of AI technology in expanding knowledge to the public. However, the agency states that AI platforms, chatbots, and search engines should be able to encourage more visitors to Wikipedia to keep the platform growing.