AI for Editors - A strategy brief

The community of volunteers is the most important and unique element of success behind Wikipedia – a leading example of encyclopedic knowledge governance around the world. For over a decade the community and Wikimedia Foundation (WMF) have developed and used artificial intelligence (AI) to power bots, products, and features. The dual forces of recent advances in AI and the increasing challenges of moderating a complex knowledge ecosystem motivated us to develop a strategy to further leverage AI’s potential and mitigate its risks on the projects. This strategy focuses on using AI to enhance the work of editors in areas that AI can have the highest impact in the projects: by automating routine and repetitive tasks that do not require human judgment or discussions, onboarding and mentorship of new editors, opening time for editors to focus on local and specialized encyclopedic knowledge across languages, and prioritizing the safeguarding of knowledge integrity, all while preserving human agency. By significantly and purposefully supporting editors’ work with AI in these areas, this strategy aims to maintain and enhance Wikipedia’s position as a trusted source of knowledge, driven by the community for generations to come.