Wikipedia has unveiled new commercial partnerships with a group of major artificial intelligence companies, including Amazon, Meta Platforms, Microsoft and France’s Mistral AI, as the online encyclopedia marked its 25th anniversary and moved to monetise soaring demand for its content from AI developers.
The Wikimedia Foundation, the nonprofit that operates Wikipedia, said the agreements will allow AI companies to access its content at a scale and speed tailored to their needs, as generative AI systems increasingly rely on large volumes of high-quality data to train and run their models. Financial terms of the deals were not disclosed.
The new partners also include AI search startup Perplexity, the foundation said, expanding a list of customers that began in 2022 with Google and later included smaller players such as ethical search engine Ecosia.
“Wikipedia is a digital wonder of the world, unlike anything else,” Wikimedia Foundation Chief Executive Maryana Iskander said in a statement, adding that the platform had become integral to the architecture of the internet as billions of users and organisations rely on its verified information.
Wikipedia, one of the most enduring institutions of the early internet, has found itself at the centre of debate over how AI companies harvest data from the web. Developers of generative AI tools have been criticised for aggressively scraping online content, much of it freely available, raising questions about whether the platforms that host and curate that information are adequately compensated.
The foundation said the deals are aimed at ensuring sustainable access to Wikipedia’s vast repository of human-edited knowledge while supporting its mission to keep content free for readers worldwide. |
