Wikipedia is backing off a plan to check AI article summaries. Earlier this month, the platform introduced plans to trial the characteristic for about 10 % of cellular net guests. To say they weren’t well-received by editors can be an understatement. The Wikimedia Basis (WMF) then modified plans and cancelled the take a look at.
The AI summaries would have appeared on the high of articles for 10 % of cellular customers. Readers would have needed to decide in to see them. The AI-generated summaries solely appeared “on a set of articles” for the two-week trial interval.
Editor feedback within the WMF’s announcement (through 404 Media) ranged from “Yuck” to “Grinning with horror.” One editor wrote, “Simply because Google has rolled out its AI summaries does not imply we have to one-up them. I sincerely beg you to not take a look at this, on cellular or wherever else. This may do quick and irreversible hurt to our readers and to our repute as a decently reliable and severe supply.”
“Wikipedia has in some methods change into a byword for sober boringness, which is great,” the editor continued. “Let’s not insult our readers’ intelligence and be a part of the stampede to roll out flashy AI summaries.”
Editors’ gripes weren’t restricted to the concept. Additionally they criticized the nonprofit for excluding them from the planning section. “You additionally say this has been ‘mentioned,’ which is completely laughable because the ‘dialogue’ you hyperlink to has precisely one participant, the unique poster, who’s one other WMF worker,” an editor wrote.
A Wikimedia Basis spokesperson shared the next assertion with Engadget:
“The Wikimedia Basis has been exploring methods to make Wikipedia and different Wikimedia tasks extra accessible to readers globally. This two-week, opt-in experiment was centered on making complicated Wikipedia articles extra accessible to individuals with totally different studying ranges. For the needs of this experiment, the summaries have been generated by an open-weight Aya mannequin by Cohere. It was meant to gauge curiosity in a characteristic like this, and to assist us take into consideration the proper of group moderation programs to make sure people stay central to deciding what info is proven on Wikipedia.
For these experiments, our typical course of consists of discussing with volunteers (who create and curate all the knowledge on Wikipedia) to make selections on whether or not and tips on how to proceed with constructing options. The dialogue round this characteristic is an instance of this course of, the place we constructed out a prototype of an thought and reached out to the Wikipedia volunteer group for his or her ideas.
It is not uncommon to obtain quite a lot of suggestions from volunteers, and we incorporate it in our selections, and generally change course. We welcome such considerate suggestions — that is what continues to make Wikipedia a really collaborative platform of human information.
As shared in our newest publish on the group dialogue web page, we don’t have any plans to proceed the experiment in the meanwhile, as we proceed to evaluate and focus on the suggestions we now have already obtained from volunteers.”Within the “dialogue” web page, the group defined that it needed to cater to its viewers’s wants. “Many readers want some simplified textual content along with the principle content material,” a WMF worker wrote. “In earlier analysis, we heard that readers needed to have an choice to get a fast overview of a subject previous to leaping into studying the complete article.”
The group did not rule out future makes use of of AI. However they mentioned editors will not be left in the dead of night subsequent time. “Bringing generative AI into the Wikipedia studying expertise is a severe set of selections, with vital implications, and we intend to deal with it as such,” the spokesperson informed 404 Media. “We don’t have any plans for bringing a abstract characteristic to the wikis with out editor involvement.”
Replace, June 13, 2025, 12:52PM ET: This story has been corrected to notice that Wikipedia by no means really began its AI abstract take a look at. The plan was introduced, however cancelled earlier than it passed off. A press release from the Wikimedia Basis has additionally been added, and the headline has been up to date as properly.
