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Title: Wikipedia cancels plan to test AI summaries after editors skewer the
idea

Date: Fri, 13 Jun 2025 16:52:58 +0000
Link: https://www.engadget.com/ai/wikipedia-cancels...

Wikipedia is backing off a plan to test AI article summaries. Earlier this
month, the platform announced plans to trial the feature for about 10 percent
of mobile web visitors. To say they weren't well-received by editors would be
an understatement. The Wikimedia Foundation (WMF) then changed plans and
cancelled the test.

The AI summaries would have appeared at the top of articles for 10 percent of
mobile users. Readers would have had to opt in to see them. The AI-generated
summaries only appeared "on a set of articles" for the two-week trial period.

Editor comments in the WMF's announcement (via 404 Media) ranged from "Yuck"
to "Grinning with horror." One editor wrote, "Just because Google has rolled
out its AI summaries doesn't mean we need to one-up them. I sincerely beg you
not to test this, on mobile or anywhere else. This would do immediate and
irreversible harm to our readers and to our reputation as a decently
trustworthy and serious source."

"Wikipedia has in some ways become a byword for sober boringness, which is
excellent," the editor continued. "Let's not insult our readers' intelligence
and join the stampede to roll out flashy AI summaries."

This screenshot from 404 Media shows another version of an AI-generated
summary on a Wikipedia page. The planned test would have only showed up on
the mobile web version of the site.Wikimedia Foundation

Editors' gripes weren't limited to the idea. They also criticized the
nonprofit for excluding them from the planning phase. "You also say this has
been 'discussed,' which is thoroughly laughable as the 'discussion' you link
to has exactly one participant, the original poster, who is another WMF
employee," an editor wrote.

A Wikimedia Foundation spokesperson shared the following statement with
Engadget:

ΓÇ£The Wikimedia Foundation has been exploring ways to make Wikipedia and
other Wikimedia projects more accessible to readers globally. This two-week,
opt-in experiment was focused on making complex Wikipedia articles more
accessible to people with different reading levels. For the purposes of this
experiment, the summaries were generated by an open-weight Aya model by
Cohere. It was meant to gauge interest in a feature like this, and to help us
think about the right kind of community moderation systems to ensure humans
remain central to deciding what information is shown on Wikipedia.

For these experiments, our usual process includes discussing with volunteers
(who create and curate all the information on Wikipedia) to make decisions on
whether and how to proceed with building features. The discussion around this
feature is an example of this process, where we built out a prototype of an
idea and reached out to the Wikipedia volunteer community for their thoughts.

It is common to receive a variety of feedback from volunteers, and we
incorporate it in our decisions, and sometimes change course. We welcome such
thoughtful feedback ΓÇö this is what continues to make Wikipedia a truly
collaborative platform of human knowledge.

As shared in our latest post on the community discussion page, we do not have
any plans to continue the experiment at the moment, as we continue to assess
and discuss the feedback we have already received from volunteers.ΓÇ¥In the
"discussion" page, the organization explained that it wanted to cater to its
audience's needs. "Many readers need some simplified text in addition to the
main content," a WMF employee wrote. "In previous research, we heard that
readers wanted to have an option to get a quick overview of a topic prior to
jumping into reading the full article."

The organization didn't rule out future uses of AI. But they said editors
won't be left in the dark next time. "Bringing generative AI into the
Wikipedia reading experience is a serious set of decisions, with important
implications, and we intend to treat it as such," the spokesperson told 404
Media. "We do not have any plans for bringing a summary feature to the wikis
without editor involvement."

Update, June 13, 2025, 12:52PM ET: This story has been corrected to note that
Wikipedia never actually started its AI summary test. The plan was announced,
but cancelled before it took place. A statement from the Wikimedia Foundation
has also been added, and the headline has been updated as well.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at
https://www.engadget.com/ai/wikipedia-cancels...
editors-skewer-the-idea-200029899.html?src=rss

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