Wikipedia Wants AI Companies to Pay for Its Content

Metaverse Planet November 12, 2025Last Updated: November 12, 2025

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Wikipedia is calling on AI developers to use its content “responsibly” and access it through its paid product, the Wikimedia Enterprise platform.

Wikipedia has laid out a plan to ensure the continued support of its website despite decreasing traffic in the age of artificial intelligence (AI). In a blog post published recently, the Wikimedia Foundation, which manages the online encyclopedia, called on AI developers to use its content “responsibly.” The Foundation requested that developers use the contributions with proper attribution and access the content through its paid product, the Wikimedia Enterprise platform.

This optional, paid platform allows companies to utilize Wikipedia content on a large scale while simultaneously preventing the overloading of Wikipedia servers. Furthermore, the paid nature of the platform enables AI companies to provide financial support for the organization’s non-profit mission.

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Page Views Dropped by 8%

Although the post does not mention any legal enforcement or threat of penalties, Wikipedia recently disclosed that AI bots were scraping data from its sites by attempting to look human. After updating its bot detection systems, it determined that an unusual surge in traffic in May and June was caused by AI bots attempting to evade detection. Conversely, human-driven page views were reported to have dropped by 8% compared to the previous year.

Wikipedia is now setting some guidelines for AI developers. The Foundation emphasizes that generative AI systems must credit the contributing authors and editors when leveraging its content. It warns that the decline in visits to Wikipedia could lead to a decrease in the number of volunteers who develop the content and the individual donors who support their work.

Earlier this year, the Foundation announced its AI strategy for editors. According to this strategy, AI will be used in areas such as automating editors’ repetitive or tedious tasks, accelerating translation processes, and developing auxiliary tools, but it will not replace human editors.

Google and Internet Archive Were the First Customers

Google and the Internet Archive were the first customers of Wikimedia Enterprise, which was launched as a commercial service in 2022. Google agreed to pay for scaled and structured access to Wikipedia content. The platform offers variable pricing based on usage volume and provides JSON data, bulk snapshots, and real-time change streams with service level guarantees.

This call coincides with Wikipedia beginning to compete with Grokipedia, the AI-powered encyclopedia recently launched by Elon Musk. Musk positions Grokipedia as an alternative to Wikipedia, which he refers to as “Wokepedia.” This period also overlaps with ongoing lawsuits between publishers and AI companies. Among these lawsuits is the copyright infringement case filed by The New York Times against OpenAI and Microsoft, alleging that they used millions of news articles without permission to train their AI models.