# Wikipedians Believed AI Would Come and Go. They Were Wrong

> **Publication**: aitalky (Independent AI Journalism)
> **Canonical Citation URL**: https://aitalky.vercel.app/news/wikipedians-believed-ai-would-come-and-go-they-were-wrong
> **Original Source**: [Wired AI](https://www.wired.com/story/book-excerpt-the-last-best-place-on-the-internet-wikipedia-artificial-intelligence/)
> **Author**: Richard Cooke (undefined)
> **Published Date**: Tuesday, October 13, 2026
> **Category**: CULTURE
> **Tags**: AI, Wired AI, culture

## Executive Summary
In a world of AI Overviews, Wikipedia usage declines. But the real loss may be far more existential than website traffic



## Full Coverage
Already in 2018 Google was training AI to write "Wikipedia-like articles," and by October 2024, a Princeton University study found that about 5 percent of nearly 3,000 newly created articles on English Wikipedia in a single month (August 2024) contained a substantial amount of AI-generated content. There were signs. ChatGPT was fond of em dashes—parenthetical statements that look like this one—and curly quotation marks. Sometimes, residues from the prompts used to compose articles were left behind ("Here is your Wikipedia article," they might say.)

At first, Wikipedians tried to shape and control AI, to make its output "acceptable and constructive," or to fix or remove if it proved otherwise. Generic fluff like "praising a village for its fertile farmlands, livestock, and scenic countryside" and fake sources were weeded out. By March 2026, AI content was found to violate its core principles so often that writing with large language models was banned outright, and their role restricted to translation and minor proofreading

A much-read essay titled "Death of Wikipedia" explained this defensive posture. It predicted a ripple effect: As contributors reduced their contributions in response to AI pervading the platform, there might be a temptation to replace their work with still more AI, creating a downward spiral. One viral X post lamented that artificial intelligence seemed to be changing things in the wrong direction: "I want AI to do my laundry and dishes so that I can do art and writing, not for AI to do my art and writing so that I can do my laundry and dishes." The "Death of Wikipedia" warned against something similar: Rather than AI performing Wikipedia's "housekeeping" roles, it might compose its articles instead, leaving humans relegated to formatting and cleanup. The result would trap editors in an endless curatorial project derived not from human priorities but from the frostbitten harvests of machines

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