The world’s largest free encyclopedia is celebrating. Wikipedia turns 25, and to commemorate this event they have prepared content and activities for all its users that give context to the beginnings of this non-profit project. However, perhaps the most striking thing about your statement It has to do with the new vision that the Wikimedia Foundation will take from now on: a Wikipedia in the age of AI.
For this reason, those responsible for managing this digital library have also revealed that Microsoft, Meta and Amazon joined other Big Tech companies such as Google to be able to use Wikipedia content to train their language models. To do this, companies pay good money to the foundation for having premium access to that content.
What is happening. The Wikimedia Foundation has confirmed that Microsoft, Meta, Amazon, Perplexity and Mistral AI have joined Google as paying customers of Wikimedia Enterprise, a commercial platform launched in 2021. According to Lane Becker, senior director of revenue at the foundation, this initiative offers a version of the Wikipedia API “optimized” for commercial use and AI companies, with functionalities customized according to the needs of each company.
Why are they paying? Tech companies rely massively on Wikipedia to train their AI models. 65 million articles in more than 300 languages are essential for chatbots like ChatGPT or virtual assistants. However, Wikipedia says that this use has also increased the maintenance and server costs of the library, whose traditional financing comes from small donations from the public. “Wikipedia is a critical component of the work of these tech companies that need to figure out how to support it financially,” explained Lane Becker told Reuters.
In detail. Wikimedia Enterprise is not simply downloading Wikipedia. The platform allows these companies to access content at a volume and speed specifically designed to train large-scale AI models, with structured data formats and custom functionality requests. Microsoft, Perplexity and Mistral AI joined forces over the last year, while Meta and Amazon were already partners although their participation had not been publicly announced until now.
Between the lines. It is a financing model with which the Wikimedia Foundation would benefit more, in addition to individual donations. It’s also a change in how Wikipedia sustains its nonprofit mission. For years, the platform has relied on individual donations while large corporations benefited from its knowledge for free.
Now, the foundation has found a balance: keeping access free for the general public while monetizing heavy commercial use. “Reaching a new sustainable balance with these new companies is critical for our continued existence, but also for yours,” pointed out Becker to The Verge.
Wikipedia in the age of AI. Just like account Foundation, Wikipedia continues to be created and maintained by approximately 250,000 volunteer editors around the world who write, edit and fact-check information for free. Tim Frank, corporate vice president of Microsoft, counted that “together, we are helping to create a sustainable content ecosystem for the AI internet, where contributors are valued.”
On the other hand, Selena Deckelmann, Director of Product and Technology at Wikimedia, assured that “Wikipedia proves that knowledge is human and knowledge needs humans. Especially now, in the age of AI, we need Wikipedia’s human-powered knowledge more than ever.”
Cover image | Oberon Copeland
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