Wikipedia is hemorrhaging visitors because the artificial intelligence revolution more and more makes the left-wing on-line encyclopedia redundant.
Wikimedia Basis CEO Bernadette Meehan advised Axios this week that Wikipedia web page views fell eight p.c in 2025 as customers more and more flip to AI instruments relatively than visiting the web site straight.
Whereas Meehan mentioned the decline was anticipated, she acknowledged that Wikimedia stays involved.
The issue is especially extreme as a result of AI corporations have relied closely on Wikipedia’s monumental database to coach and energy their fashions.
“We’re not asking for charity”: Wikimedia CEO calls out AI for unpaid information use https://t.co/RG0hwixIiZ
— Axios (@axios) October 2, 2026
This enables customers to acquire data derived from the encyclopedia with out ever visiting it, threatening its complete monetary mannequin.
Round 80 p.c of Wikimedia’s working price range comes from small donations, many generated by means of fundraising banners proven on to readers.
“If much less readers are coming, that’s much less conversion to editors,” Meehan additionally warned.
Whereas the web site as soon as had a fame as a helpful for useful resource for individuals world wide, it has develop into infamous for its aggressive left-wing bias on all kinds of points.
A 2024 Manhattan Institute examine inspecting hundreds of political articles discovered Wikipedia was extra more likely to affiliate right-leaning public figures with damaging sentiment than their left-leaning counterparts.
The remedy of conservative media outlets is equally revealing.
Wikipedia at present describes The Gateway Pundit within the opening sentence of its article as an “American far-right pretend information web site.”
Regardless of the web site’s declining direct readership, Meehan insisted that Wikipedia stays the “spine” of on-line data.
Wikimedia is now trying to extract income from the expertise corporations utilizing its materials at monumental scale.
Amazon, Google, Microsoft, Meta and Perplexity are amongst these paying for enterprise entry to Wikipedia’s information.
OpenAI and Anthropic aren’t amongst Wikimedia’s publicly disclosed enterprise prospects.
“We’re not asking for charity,” Meehan mentioned, though the web site constantly begs its readers for donations.
The web site’s co-founder, Larry Sanger, has beforehand defined that the as soon as trusted encyclopedia was taken over by far-left activists.
“Wikipedia made an actual effort at neutrality for, I’d say, its first 5 years or so. After which it started a protracted, sluggish slide into what I’d name leftist propaganda,” he mentioned in an interview final 12 months.
”I imply, that’s a harsh description to placed on Wikipedia, however not less than lots of the political articles learn that manner now.”
Wikipedia co-founder Larry Sanger on how his web site went woke pic.twitter.com/vGTp97OIRm
— Finish Wokeness (@EndWokeness) December 31, 2024
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