Michaela
Marshall Miller, Vice President of Product at the Wikimedia Foundation, has revealed that human pageviews for Wikipedia have declined by 8% year over year, attributing the drop to the growing influence of generative AI tools and social media platforms on how people access information.
Key points:
- Wikipedia traffic down 8% as AI and social media change how users search for information
- Bots mimicking humans are overloading Wikimedia’s systems, with unusual activity traced to Brazil
- Elon Musk plans to launch Grokipedia, an AI-powered rival aiming to challenge Wikipedia’s dominance
In a recent blog post, Miller noted that the growing reliance of companies on Wikipedia content to power new AI tools is placing increased pressure on Wikimedia’s projects. He also emphasized that automated systems, including bots and web crawlers, are straining the platform’s infrastructure as they continuously extract data from Wikipedia.
Miller explained that recent data shows an increasing number of bots scraping Wikipedia and other Wikimedia platforms are becoming more advanced, often mimicking human behavior to evade detection. He added that around May 2025, the organization began noticing an unusual surge in what appeared to be human activity, with much of it traced back to Brazil.
“We are seeing declines in human pageviews on Wikipedia over the past few months, amounting to a decrease of roughly 8% as compared to the same months in 2024,” Miller wrote. Miller added that the decline in pageviews likely reflects the growing influence of generative AI and social media on how people access information. He noted that search engines increasingly provide direct answers to users, responses that, he said, are “often based on Wikipedia content.”
“These declines are not unexpected. Search engines are increasingly using generative AI to provide answers directly to searchers rather than linking to sites like ours. And younger generations are seeking information on social video platforms rather than the open web. This gradual shift is not unique to Wikipedia,” Miller wrote, noting that many other publications and content platforms similar to Wikipedia are reporting similar shifts.
Recent data confirms that Wikipedia has become one of the most influential sources shaping how people access information online. Almost all large language models (LLMs), including those that power modern AI tools, train in part on Wikipedia datasets. Miller noted that audiences continue to engage with knowledge produced by Wikimedia’s volunteer community across the wider internet, even if they no longer access it directly through the Wikipedia website.
Miller acknowledged that the Wikimedia Foundation supports emerging technologies that expand access to knowledge but emphasized that platforms using Wikipedia content, such as LLMs, AI chatbots, search engines, and social media, should also direct users back to the site. He warned that declining visits could reduce community participation in updating and improving content, while also affecting the individual donations that sustain Wikipedia’s operations.
The timing of Miller’s remarks comes just as Elon Musk, founder and CEO of xAI, revealed plans to roll out an early beta of Grokipedia within two weeks. The new platform, positioned as a rival to Wikipedia, is intended to combat misinformation and offer what Musk describes as a more reliable source of knowledge.
Musk has described Grokipedia as an “open source knowledge repository.” He explained that Grok would review diverse materials, including Wikipedia entries, documents, and PDFs, to assess whether information is true, “partially” true, false, or incomplete. The system would then rewrite the content to present what it deems the most complete and accurate version.
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Michaela has no crypto positions and does not hold any crypto assets. This article is provided for informational purposes only and should not be construed as financial advice. The Shib Magazine and The Shib Daily are the official media and publications of the Shiba Inu cryptocurrency project. Readers are encouraged to conduct their own research and consult with a qualified financial adviser before making any investment decisions.
