Wikipedia, the world’s largest source of information, faces an unexpected threat: Artificial Intelligence (AI) boots. According to the Wikimedia Foundation, the use of bandwidth of the platform has increased by 50 percent since the beginning of 2024. However, the reason for this increase is not human readers, but AI bots.

Wikipedia’s boats scanning the rich content pool of Wikipedia to train productive artificial intelligence models are forcing the infrastructure of the platform. These bots collect all kinds of data from visuals in Wikimedia Commons to Wikipedia articles.

Artificial Intelligence Excavations at Wikipedia

For example, after the death of former US President Jimmy Carter in December 2023, users flocked to Wikipedia to watch the video of his presidential debate with Ronald Reagan. Human traffic can be envisaged and managed by Wikimedia’s systems. However, instead of focusing on major popular content such as AI bots, human readers, it is often rarely directed to pages that are rarely visited. This pushes Wikimedia’s main data centers more and creates serious costs.

According to detailed examinations of the Foundation, 65 percent of Wikipedia’s resource consumption comes from boots. This has become a constant headache for Wikipedia. Security teams have to detect and block new bots every day, while this bottleneck slows down page access for real users.

According to the Wikimedia Foundation, the main problem is that these artificial intelligence companies use the content they receive from Wikipedia without reference. Since the foundation is an organization that survived with donations, it is trying to encourage new users to contribute to the platform. However, this does not form a sustainable model because AI boots do not take the information back to the Wikipedia community. The company is currently working on alternative solutions.