Wikipedia blames AI, social media for decline in human traffic

Wikipedia has for years been the most popular source of information on the internet, but those days are coming to an end and fast.

Wikimedia, the company behind the website in a blog post on 17 October said it has noticed a decline in its human traffic volume which it attributes to the influence of AI and social media.

The team also calls on internet users and AI companies to consider ways of ensuring human traffic gets to the website.

Ensuring a win-win

In the blog post, Wikimedia Senior Director of Product Marshall Miller said Wikipedia has been a popular source of information on the open web and it still is.

However, the proliferation of generative AI is threatening its existence by providing answers for internet users and making it unnecessary to visit the website, even though the answers are derived from Wikipedia.

Miller said their system of filtering search traffic found out several bots masked as humans have been used on the website, but real human traffic has reduced by 8% year on year.

“We believe that these declines reflect the impact of generative AI and social media on how people seek information, especially with search engines providing answers directly to searchers, often based on Wikipedia content.”

Indeed, social media is not left out of the game. Social media platform X has been repeatedly reported as the number one information source for people in several countries, backed by its in-built AI Grok of course.

🚨 X DOMINATES IN 140 COUNTRIES AND COUNTING

X continues its meteoric rise, now dominating in 140 countries and rapidly expanding its global presence.

From the Americas to Asia, Africa to Europe, X is reshaping how the world connects, communicates, and consumes content.

With… pic.twitter.com/B2jWN5aVnc

— Mario Nawfal (@MarioNawfal) December 31, 2024

To ensure that Wikipedia continues to provide free content which AI also uses to provide answers to internet users, Miller suggests that AI companies find a way of directing users to follow links to the website and also encourages users to follow such links.