Wikipedia says traffic is falling due to AI search summaries and social video

Wikipedia is often described as the last good website on an internet increasingly filled with toxic social media and AI slop. But it appears the online encyclopedia isn’t completely immune to broader trends, with human page visits down 8% year-on-year, according to a new blog post by Marshall Miller of the Wikimedia Foundation.

The foundation tries to distinguish between human and bot traffic, and Miller writes that the decline came to light “in recent months” after an update to Wikipedia’s bot detection systems appeared to show that “much of the unusually high traffic during May and June came from bots built to evade detection.”

Why is traffic decreasing? Miller points to “the impact of generative AI and social media on the way people search for information,” especially as “search engines are increasingly using generative AI to deliver answers directly to searchers rather than linking to sites like ours” and as “younger generations seek information on social video platforms rather than on the open web.” (Google has has disputed the claim that AI summaries reduce traffic from searches.)

Miller says the foundation welcomes “new ways for people to gain knowledge” and argues that this doesn’t make Wikipedia any less important, because knowledge from the encyclopedia still reaches people even if they don’t visit the website. Wikipedia even experimented with its own AI summaries, although it paused the effort after editors complained.

But this shift does come with risks, especially as people become less aware of where their information actually comes from. As Miller puts it, “With fewer visits to Wikipedia, fewer volunteers will grow and enrich the content, and fewer individual donors will support this work.” (Some of those volunteers are truly remarkable, reportedly disarming a gunman at a Wikipedia editorial conference on Friday.)

For that reason, he argues that AI, search and social companies that use Wikipedia content should “encourage more visitors” to the website itself.

And he says that Wikipedia itself is taking steps, for example by developing a new framework for attributing content from the encyclopedia. The organization also has two teams to help Wikipedia reach new readers, and is looking for volunteers to help.

Miller also encourages readers to “support content integrity and content creation more broadly.”

“When looking for information online, look for quotes and click through to the original source material,” he writes. “Talk to the people you know about the importance of trusted, human-curated knowledge, and help them understand that the content underlying generative AI is created by real people who deserve their support.”