Wikimedia announces AI partners including Meta and Microsoft (www.engadget.com)

Wikimedia, the parent organization of Wikipedia, has announced a series of partnerships with major tech companies including Meta, Microsoft, and Amazon, coinciding with Wikipedia's 25th anniversary. These collaborations aim to provide these AI-focused companies with streamlined access to Wikipedia's vast repository of content, alleviating the rising costs associated with AI chatbots scraping information from the encyclopedia. With the surge in traffic driven by AI-generated summaries and large language models (LLMs), Wikimedia had previously expressed concerns about the potential existential threat posed to its nonprofit mission. The shift to enterprise partnerships is significant as it helps secure financial sustainability for Wikipedia while providing tech firms safer, more efficient access to its 65 million free articles and other projects like Wikivoyage and Wikibooks. Lane Becker, president of Wikimedia Enterprise, emphasized the need for Big Tech to transition to a commercial platform that can support Wikipedia's work and its ongoing operational costs. Under these new agreements, companies will utilize high-throughput APIs designed to effectively supply their chatbot systems with Wikipedia content, marking a critical step towards preserving the encyclopedia's integrity amid the challenges posed by AI advancements.