Wikipedia, the beloved online encyclopedia, has debated for a while on how to handle the use of large language models (LLMs) in articles. Now, the practice is officially banned, save for a few exceptions in editing and translation.
Wikipedia administrator Chaotic Enby explained in the original proposal, “Prior proposals for an immediate, all-encompassing community guideline on LLMs have failed due to the standard issues of addressing complex, large-scale issues at once: people, even those who broadly agreed with the goals of said proposals, found specific issues with certain parts of it and critiques that it was too vague/specific. Consensus has existed on the idea of change, but not on the implementation of change.”
After much debate, the new policy is in effect: Wikipedia authors are not allowed to use LLMs for generating or rewriting article content. There are two primary exceptions, though.
First, editors can use LLMs to suggest refinements to their own writing, as long as the edits are checked for accuracy. In other words, it’s being treated like any other grammar checker or writing assistance tool. The policy says, “ LLMs can go beyond what you ask of them and change the meaning of the text such that it is not supported by the sources cited.”
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The second exemption for LLMs is with translation assistance. Editors can use AI tools for the first pass at translating text, but they still need to be fluent enough in both languages to catch errors. As with regular writing refinements, anyone using LLMs also has to check that incorrect information hasn’t been injected.
Importantly, this policy only applies to the English Wikipedia (en.wikipedia.org). Each Wikipedia site has its own independent rules and editing teams, and other sites might decide on different rules. For example, Spanish Wikipedia (es.wikipedia.org) currently bans LLMs for creating new Wikipedia articles from scratch or expanding existing entries, without specific carveouts for translation or writing assistance.
Unfortunately, identifying text written with LLMs is still an imperfect science, so some AI slop text might still appear on pages that have less frequent moderation. Wikipedia has some tips for spotting LLM-generated text, but the policy page also notes that “some editors may have similar writing styles to LLMs.” Personally, I loved em dashes before ChatGPT ever existed, and I will keep using them.
Source: Wikipedia (1, 2) via Chaotic Enby
