Wikimedia Faces Mounting Strain from AI Crawlers as Bandwidth Usage Soars 50%

The Hidden Face of Wikipedia is an investigation written by Victor Lefebvre and Michel Sandrin, whose objective is to explain to the general public the undersides of Wikipedia's operation, what they call "the back-shopping of the site". The objective: to understand how the writing of the pages organizes, the ideological biases that have impregnated the site, and the conflicts of interest that exist. Outside the Atlantic, Elon Musk criticized Wik…

Wikimedia Foundation bemoans AI bot bandwidth burden

: Crawlers snarfing long-tail content for training and whatnot cost us a fortune

AI bots strain Wikimedia as bandwidth surges 50%

Automated AI bots seeking training data threaten Wikipedia project stability, foundation says.

Wikipedia Faces Flood of AI Bots That Are Eating Bandwidth, Raising Costs

'Our content is free, our infrastructure is not,' the nonprofit that runs Wikipedia says, warning that AI scrapers are wasting the site's bandwidth.

Artificial intelligence: The online encyclopedia can handle the increasing number of people visiting Wikipedia. But the onslaught of bots from…

AI crawlers cause Wikimedia Commons bandwidth demands to surge 50%

The Wikimedia Foundation says bandwidth consumption for multimedia downloads has surged by 50% since January, 2024.