- Human visits to Wikipedia decreased by about 8% between May and August compared to the previous year.
- Much of earlier reported high traffic came from bots pretending to be humans.
- Nearly 60% of Google searches end with AI-generated answers, often using Wikipedia content directly on the search page.
- Publishers warn that tech platforms use their content without payment, calling the situation an existential threat.
- The rise of AI content online is accelerating, with nearly half of new articles created by AI as of late 2024.
The Wikimedia Foundation reported that human traffic to Wikipedia fell by roughly 8% during May to August compared to the same months in 2024. This adjustment followed the discovery that many visitors in May and June were actually sophisticated bots, mostly originating from Brazil, disguised as humans.
After updating its traffic detection methods in May, the foundation found that much of the previously high visitor counts were inflated by these bots. The revised data shows a clear decline in genuine human page views. Official statements attributed this drop to users increasingly relying on generative AI and social media for information. Many search engines now offer direct answers on their results page, often based on Wikipedia content, reducing the need for users to visit the site.
Supporting this trend, research from Pew Research shows Google Search referral traffic to premium publishers has declined sharply, with losses exceeding gains by a two-to-one margin during May and June 2025. Nearly 60% of Google queries now end with AI-generated summaries, limiting actual visits to original sources.
Publishers across different sectors have raised concerns, describing the situation as an existential crisis. Danielle Coffey, leader of the News/Media Alliance representing over 2,000 outlets, said that Google uses publisher content without compensation and offers no realistic way to avoid being excluded from search results. She called the model, “parasitic, unsustainable, and a real existential threat to many in our industry.”
The volume of AI-created content is growing rapidly. Data from SEO firm Graphite indicated that by November 2024, nearly half of new web articles were produced using AI. A post by Ask Perplexity on X reported AI content rose from about 5% in 2020 to 48% in May 2025, with expectations it could reach 90% by next year.
The Wikimedia Foundation highlighted that fewer visits to Wikipedia could mean less volunteer participation and fewer donors supporting the platform. The foundation is responding with stricter third-party access rules, development of attribution frameworks, and exploring ways to reach younger audiences on platforms like YouTube and TikTok.
The foundation emphasized that after 25 years, the human knowledge hosted on Wikipedia remains extremely valuable but questioned whether platforms benefiting from this knowledge will help sustain its ecosystem.
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