Wikipedia asks AI companies to use its paid API
Wikipedia has fired a warning at artificial intelligence companies to desist from the practice of data scraping its vast repository of knowledge, but instead leverage its paid API for responsible data access. According to the Wikimedia Foundation, which operates the free online encyclopedia, continued data scraping by AI firms puts a strain on the infrastructure while undermining the human-powered ecosystem that keeps Wikipedia accurate and current.
The foundation behind Wikipedia signaled that AI companies, including OpenAI and Anthropic among others, constructed their large models using huge datasets, sometimes lifted straight from websites like Wikipedia sans proper licensing or attribution. Given this, the rise of generative AI applications finds Wikipedia asking for fair compensation and integrity of data, due credit to its millions of volunteer editors.
According to Wikimedia, traffic has recently spiked owing to scraping bots masquerading as human users, while actual human views of the online pages fell nearly 8% year-over-year-a situation raising concerns about the sustainability of volunteer contributions dependent on real engagement.
Protection of Knowledge and Data Transparency
Wikipedia’s paid API was introduced under the “Enterprise” model, giving AI firms and big tech companies structured access to its content while funding the mission of the nonprofit. The foundation has said this is not about curtailing access but about being transparent, sustainable, and respecting human contributors. The Wikimedia Foundation leadership noted that generative AI platforms tend to heavily lean on Wikipedia data, but the users of those tools hardly ever see the source or get the opportunity to visit the original pages. This lack of attribution, according to them, weakens the ecosystem powering the world’s free knowledge base. The organization also emphasized its ethics in using AI-employing automation to assist, and not replace, editors to moderate, translate, and detect errors. In other words, Wikipedia is drawing a line: AI innovation must go hand-in-hand with fair data practices. And the signal could not be clearer for technology companies: pay for structured access, give credit where credit is due, and you will be protecting the open web’s most valuable knowledge hub.
