Don’t spread this nonsense, please. All of Wikipedia’s content is already free, stays free and is still in the same place as ever. What has been sold to AI companies, that have already been scraping and using the site for years for free, is API access to WP’s material, suited to AI companies’ needs and hopefully less of a burden on WP’s normal infrastructure.
The deals mean that most major AI developers have now signed on to the foundation’s Wikimedia Enterprise program, a commercial subsidiary that sells high-speed API access to Wikipedia’s 65 million articles at higher speeds and volumes than the free public APIs provide. Wikipedia’s content remains freely available under a Creative Commons license, but the Enterprise program charges for faster, higher-volume access to the data.
… which came right after they begged us for $2.50 to support their cause for more than a month in December. I’m not sure my little donation was a good idea now.
Right after they reached deals to sell all of those lovely, long, detailed, crowded-sourced articles for AI training data :(
Don’t spread this nonsense, please. All of Wikipedia’s content is already free, stays free and is still in the same place as ever. What has been sold to AI companies, that have already been scraping and using the site for years for free, is API access to WP’s material, suited to AI companies’ needs and hopefully less of a burden on WP’s normal infrastructure.
https://arstechnica.com/ai/2026/01/wikipedia-will-share-content-with-ai-firms-in-new-licensing-deals/
… which came right after they begged us for $2.50 to support their cause for more than a month in December. I’m not sure my little donation was a good idea now.