Wikipedia recently flirted with generative AI summaries of pages, only to quickly backtrack after the editors who make Wikipedia the invaluable resource that it is voiced their extreme displeasure.
As reported by 404 Media, earlier this month, the Wikimedia Foundation, or WMF, quietly tested a feature that added AI-generated summaries to a handful of articles for mobile users. Only 10 percent of readers even saw them, and only after opting in. But that was enough for the editors to start getting some wild ideas while rereading the French Revolution Wikipedia page.
Veteran editors banded together to let the WMF know just how much they hated even the slightest suggestion that words written on a Wikipedia page were generated by artificial intelligence and not a human who put their valuable time and effort into curating a page with trusted, properly sourced information.
Wikipedia’s AI Summaries Are Gone—For Now—After Editorial Revolt
Comments from veteran editors all expressed similar sentiments, that suddenly using AI summaries just because Google is doing it will only lower the average reader’s trust in Wikipedia, and will throw its reliability into question. Or, as one editor put it, “Wikipedia has in some ways become a byword for sober boringness, which is excellent. Let’s not insult our readers’ intelligence and join the stampede to roll out flashy AI summaries.”
Oof. Sometimes you just gotta sit back and bask in the glow of the well-made and succinct point. Kudos to you, anonymous Wikipedia editor, and to 404 Media for bringing it to all of our attention.
A side beef the editors had with the AI summaries was with the process with which they were implemented it was with the process. Namely, that day, the lifeblood of the site was almost completely left out of the discussion. Editors were blindsided, excluded from planning, and pointed out that the so-called “discussion” WMF cited in its defense had exactly one participant: a WMF employee.
The WMF justified all by arguing that the contemporary internet user wants digestible summaries before diving into dense articles, and previous research suggests most readers hover around a 9th-grade reading level, and even lower for non-native English speakers. They argue that the AI was just trying to help by offering readers a slightly simplified, more approachable entry point into what could otherwise be considered fairly dense material.
Fair point, but it wasn’t enough to sway the league of editors. The foundation hit pause on the whole AI summary experiment, insisting that it was only a test run and that any future initiatives regarding AI summaries will include the editors. So while the AI summaries are gone, it’s only for now, as the WMF says itis still interested in incorporating AI summaries in some capacity.
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