The Wikimedia Foundation—which hosts Wikipedia—has announced its new AI policy, saying its “new AI strategy puts Wikipedia’s humans first.”

Companies and organizations of all sizes are pressured to adopt AI. Some, such as Duolingo, have announced policies that are decidedly AI-first, even replacing human workers with AI.

In contrast, Wikimedia makes clear that it has no intention of replacing humans in favor of AI.

Not too long ago, we were asked when we’re going to replace Wikipedia’s human-curated knowledge with AI.

The answer? We’re not.

Wikimedia says its new policy’s direction is driven by the fact that AI cannot duplicate what Wikipedia’s editors have accomplished.

The community of volunteers behind Wikipedia is the most important and unique element of Wikipedia’s success. For nearly 25 years, Wikipedia editors have researched, deliberated, discussed, built consensus, and collaboratively written the largest encyclopedia humankind has ever seen. Their care and commitment to reliable encyclopedic knowledge is something AI cannot replace.

That is why our new AI strategy doubles down on the volunteers behind Wikipedia.

That doesn’t mean Wikimedia isn’t going to use AI, but it plans to use it in a way that compliments its human editors, rather than replacing them.

We will use AI to build features that remove technical barriers to allow the humans at the core of Wikipedia to spend their valuable time on what they want to accomplish, and not on how to technically achieve it. Our investments will be focused on specific areas where generative AI excels, all in the service of creating unique opportunities that will boost Wikipedia’s volunteers:

• Supporting Wikipedia’s moderators and patrollers with AI-assisted workflows that automate tedious tasks in support of knowledge integrity;
• Giving Wikipedia’s editors time back by improving the discoverability of information on Wikipedia to leave more time for human deliberation, judgment, and consensus building;
• Helping editors share local perspectives or context by automating the translation and adaptation of common topics;
• Scaling the onboarding of new Wikipedia volunteers with guided mentorship.

We believe that our future work with AI will be successful not only because of what we do, but how we do it. Our efforts will use our long-held values, principles, and policies (like privacy and human rights) as a compass: we will take a human-centered approach and will prioritize human agency; we will prioritize using open-source or open-weight AI; we will prioritize transparency; and we will take a nuanced approach to multilinguality, a fundamental part of Wikipedia.

In an increasingly AI-crazed tech industry, it’s refreshing to see a common-sense approach to using AI, tapping into its strength where it makes sense, while continuing to rely on tried-and-true methods that rely on humans where AI falls short.