Though every digital organization seems to be rushing to hop onto the AI bandwagon, Wikipedia is one of the few that’s putting on the brakes… at least for now.
As reported this week by 404 Media, the site has paused a planned two-week trial of AI-generated article summaries after receiving intense backlash from its editor community.
The experiment, which was initially scheduled to begin on June 2 and announced on Wikipedia’s Village Pump -- a gathering place for editors -- received hundreds of comments, nearly all of them saying the same thing: Don’t do it.
Wikipedia’s Simple summaries were meant to make articles easier to understand
Wikipedia’s AI-generated summaries, called “simple summaries,” were explained as “machine-generated, but editor-moderated, simple summaries for readers.” The idea behind it was simple and something we’ve all seen before: take existing Wikipedia text and simplify it for readers.
Though Wikipedia wasn’t launching the feature widely, it planned to run a two-week experiment on the mobile website, where 10% of readers would be given the option to see pre-generated summaries on a set of articles.
Wikipedia’s initial plan was to turn the feature off after two weeks and then use the data it collected to see if users were interested in it.
As shared by 404 Media, the simple summaries would show up at the top of an article, and users would need to click to expand and read them.
Wikipedia’s human editors weren’t exactly thrilled
Like many AI features, it wasn’t exactly well-received. Within hours of the announcement, Wikipedia's human volunteer editors flooded the thread with comments.
One simply wrote, “Yuck,” while another said they were “grinning with horror,” adding, “Just because Google has rolled out its AI summaries doesn't mean we need to one-up them.”
And the comparison isn’t exactly off. Though Google seems to have no plans to hit pause on its AI features, its AI Overviews have gone viral multiple times (for all the wrong reasons). Just a couple of weeks ago, an AI Overview told people it’s still 2024 with complete confidence when asked what year it is. AI Overviews have advised people to eat glue and rocks, add glue to pizza, and have even previously given explanations for made-up idioms.
The same Wikipedia editor further added that AI summaries “would do immediate and irreversible harm” to Wikipedia readers and the site’s overall reputation as “a decently trustworthy and serious source.” Wikipedia's plan to roll out AI summaries wasn’t the only thing editors had gripes about, though.
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.
Wikipedia editor
The announcement, which was made by someone on behalf of Wikipedia’s Web Team, mentioned that "simple summaries" is one of the ideas they’ve been discussing. It included a link to the “discussion,” where the team behind Wikipedia explained that the idea was to cater to its audience’s needs, and that “many readers need some simplified text in addition to the main content.”
An editor pointed out how “laughable” it was in the comments, saying “the ‘discussion’ you link to has exactly one participant, the original poster, who is another WMF employee.”
Like it or not, "simple summaries" will probably be back soon
In an email sent by a Wikimedia Foundation spokesperson to 404 Media, the spokesperson stated, “Reading through the comments, it’s clear we could have done a better job introducing this idea and opening up the conversation here on VPT back in March.”
They further explained, “We do not have any plans for bringing a summary feature to the wikis without editor involvement,” suggesting that though the feature has been paused, it hasn’t been scrapped entirely.
So while they’ve been paused for now, the AI-generated summaries will likely return, but with a bit more input from the people who actually write Wikipedia.
