Wikipedia cancels plan to check AI summaries after editors skewer the thought

Wikipedia is backing off a plan to check AI article summaries. Earlier this month, the platform introduced plans to trial the function for about 10 % of cell internet guests. To say they weren’t well-received by editors can be an understatement. The Wikimedia Basis (WMF) then modified plans and cancelled the check.

The AI summaries would have appeared on the prime of articles for 10 % of cell 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 (via 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 check this, on cell or wherever else. This could do instant and irreversible hurt to our readers and to our repute as a decently reliable and severe supply.”

“Wikipedia has in some methods turn into a byword for sober boringness, which is superb,” 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 thought. Additionally they criticized the nonprofit for excluding them from the planning section. “You additionally say this has been ‘mentioned,’ which is totally 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 initiatives more accessible to readers globally. This two-week, opt-in experiment was targeted on making advanced Wikipedia articles extra accessible to folks with different reading levels. For the needs of this experiment, the summaries had been generated by an open-weight Aya mannequin by Cohere. It was meant to gauge curiosity in a function like this, and to assist us take into consideration the proper of group moderation methods to make sure people stay central to deciding what info is proven on Wikipedia.

For these experiments, our common course of consists of discussing with volunteers (who create and curate all the data on Wikipedia) to make selections on whether or not and the way to proceed with constructing options. The dialogue round this function 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 a wide range of suggestions from volunteers, and we incorporate it in our selections, and typically change course. We welcome such considerate suggestions — that is what continues to make Wikipedia a really collaborative platform of human data.

As shared in our latest post on the group dialogue web page, we would not have any plans to proceed the experiment in the intervening time, as we proceed to evaluate and focus on the suggestions we now have already acquired 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 primary 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 at the hours of darkness subsequent time. “Bringing generative AI into the Wikipedia studying expertise is a severe set of selections, with essential implications, and we intend to deal with it as such,” the spokesperson informed 404 Media. “We would not have any plans for bringing a abstract function 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 truly began its AI abstract check. The plan was introduced, however cancelled earlier than it came about. An announcement from the Wikimedia Basis has additionally been added, and the headline has been up to date as effectively.