Wikipedia Urges AI Firms to Use Paid Platform Over Web Scraping to Support Its Mission
- ByStartupStory | November 11, 2025
The Wikimedia Foundation, the nonprofit organization behind Wikipedia, has taken a firm stance regarding how artificial intelligence companies use its vast knowledge base. In a recent blog post, the Foundation called on AI developers and companies to stop scraping Wikipedia’s content directly from its website and instead access the data through its paid product, Wikimedia Enterprise. This move aims to protect Wikipedia’s infrastructure, ensure fair attribution, and provide sustainable financial support to the platform.
Wikipedia has become a crucial dataset for training generative AI models, with many AI companies relying heavily on its content to power chatbots and search assistants. However, this growing dependence has resulted in AI bots generating around 65% of Wikipedia’s internet traffic, often disguising themselves as human users to evade detection. This heavy automated traffic severely strains Wikipedia’s servers and contributes to a troubling decline; human visits to the site dropped by approximately 8% year-over-year, threatening the volunteer-driven ecosystem that keeps Wikipedia reliable and up-to-date.
The Wikimedia Foundation emphasizes that using the Wikimedia Enterprise platform allows high-volume users like AI firms to access Wikipedia’s content at scale without overburdening Wikipedia’s infrastructure. Moreover, the paid service channels funds back to the nonprofit, helping to maintain and enrich the encyclopedia’s content. This financial support is critical because Wikipedia relies on donations from readers and its community of volunteer editors.
Beyond financial considerations, Wikipedia also stresses the importance of responsible use and proper attribution. The Foundation urges AI companies to give credit to the thousands of human contributors whose diligent work forms the backbone of Wikipedia’s high-quality information. By doing so, AI developers can maintain trust and transparency in the sources of their generated content.
While the Wikimedia Foundation has not threatened legal action against companies scraping its website, the call for ethical and sustainable use of Wikipedia’s resources is clear. The organization advocates for a collaborative ecosystem where AI innovation and Wikipedia’s mission can coexist harmoniously.
This shift also reflects a broader trend in the tech world, with other digital information platforms like Reddit demanding payment for data use and formalizing partnerships with AI companies.
In summary, Wikipedia’s plea to AI firms to transition from unauthorized scraping to its paid API represents an important effort to safeguard the future of the world’s largest online encyclopedia. It underscores the need for responsible AI development that respects the origins of digital knowledge and financially sustains the communities that create it.
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