Wikipedia Visit Declines as a Result of AI Summaries

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Wikipedia Visit Declines as a Result of AI Summaries

Wikipedia, often hailed as one of the internet’s last bastions of quality content, is experiencing a notable traffic decline, and the culprit may be the very technology that relies on it most.

The Wikimedia Foundation reports that human pageviews dropped 8% year-over-year, a decline Marshall Miller attributes to two major shifts in how people consume information: AI-powered search summaries and the rise of social video platforms like TikTok. “Search engines are increasingly using generative AI to provide answers directly to searchers rather than linking to sites like ours,” Miller explained in a recent blog post. Meanwhile, younger users are turning to social video platforms instead of traditional websites for their information needs.

The irony is much of the knowledge being served up by these AI systems originally comes from Wikipedia itself. Users are still getting Wikipedia’s information, they’re just not visiting the site to get it.

This shift poses real risks for the volunteer-driven encyclopedia. Fewer visitors could mean fewer volunteers to maintain and expand content, and fewer individual donors to fund the operation. It’s a sustainability concern for a platform that has long operated outside the typical ad-supported business model. Miller insists that AI, search, and social companies leveraging Wikipedia’s content have a responsibility to drive traffic back to the source. “They must encourage more visitors” to Wikipedia itself, he argues.

The foundation isn’t sitting idle. They’re developing new attribution frameworks to better track how Wikipedia content is used, and have deployed two teams focused on reaching new audiences. They’re also calling for volunteers to help with these efforts.

But Miller’s message extends beyond Wikipedia’s walls. He’s encouraging all internet users to support quality content creation by clicking through to original sources, checking citations, and recognizing that “the content underlying generative AI was created by real people who deserve their support.”

In an era where AI makes information feel frictionless and instantaneous, Wikipedia’s traffic troubles serve as a reminder: someone, somewhere, still has to create and maintain the knowledge we all depend on.