Wikipedia celebrated its 25th anniversary while adapting to structural shifts from AI search tools and automated content.
With traffic dropping notably since 2022, the platform updated its policies to strictly limit large language models in article creation.
Explore the data behind the traffic shift and new editorial guidelines.
The decline in readability
Since 2022, Wikipedia has lost almost a quarter of its readers, losing over 1,1 billion visits each month. Although between 2015 and 2025 the platform garnered 1,9 trillion page views, with an average of 508 million visits per day, this trend has begun to reverse.
This change is linked to the use of artificial intelligence systems. Users now turn to automated tools to get ready-made answers, instead of visiting sources directly. According to the data, the percentage of people who choose to click on a link through a chatbot is only 0,33%, while in traditional search engines the corresponding percentage reaches 9%.
The challenge of artificial intelligence and the community
The spread of artificial intelligence tools has also created problems within Wikipedia. A Princeton University study in October 2024 showed that 5% of new articles on the English version of the website contained content generated by such systems.
To address the phenomenon, in March 2026 the platform imposed strict restrictions: it banned the use of large language models for writing articles, allowing them only for translations and simple text corrections.
Worrying about the future
In addition to losing readers, Wikipedia is facing a shortage of new volunteers. Experts such as Christophe Henner and Dariusz Jemielniak have pointed out that the combination of declining traffic, difficulty in attracting new contributors, and the threat from tools that automatically summarize content pose a critical challenge to the encyclopedia's future.
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