Faced with the "consumption" of web traffic by AI chatbots and the demand for high-quality data for large model training, the Wikimedia Foundation, the operator of Wikipedia, is accelerating its commercial defense strategy.

Big Players Enter: The "Knowledge Subscription" Model in the AI Era

On the occasion of Wikipedia's 25th anniversary, the Wikimedia Foundation announced that Amazon, Meta, Microsoft, Mistral AI, and Perplexity have officially joined its "Wikimedia Enterprise Partner Program." Previously, companies such as Google and Ecosia had already joined.

These tech giants will access real-time data streams from Wikipedia through paid API interfaces, in a more compliant and efficient way. This move marks a milestone step for Wikipedia in leveraging the industry's heavy reliance on its content to achieve "self-sustenance."

Wikipedia

Crises in Traffic: Is AI Taking Without Giving Back?

Wikipedia is facing unprecedented survival challenges:

  • Traffic Drop: Recent data shows that due to AI search summaries (such as Google AI Overviews) and chatbots providing direct answers, users no longer click into Wikipedia. Its human visits have dropped by about 8% in the past year.

  • Cost Surge: Although human visitors have decreased, the large-scale crawling by AI bots has significantly increased server load and maintenance costs.

  • Ecosystem Threat: Traffic loss means reduced donations and volunteer attrition. The foundation emphasized that if companies profiting from the data do not provide financial support, this "open knowledge model" may run dry.

The Crossroads of Law and Ethics

Although Wikipedia has secured some revenue through the enterprise program, larger tensions are still spreading. Not all content websites have the same strong bargaining power as Wikipedia. In the current unclear legal environment, the behavior of AI companies "massively extracting value without returning traffic" is mobilizing the entire internet content ecosystem to seek a more fair licensing mechanism.