I attempted to fix some AI-generated content that I found on wikipedia recently - it had broken formatting, confusing + made-up text, and links on the wrong keywords; just generally very low quality edits.
I made my edits and they were immediately reverted by wikipedia's own AI bot. I gave up.
> It was around December 2023. A few other editors and I were chatting on Wikipedia’s Discord server, and we had all seen very strange articles with the same odd characteristics.
I was afraid of that. I grabbed a 2024-04-20 copy as a backup, in case it turned to slop, but I suspected it might be tainted already.
All of these companies helped themselves to resources like Wikipedia and then turn around and allow their tools to dump slop everywhere. It's appalling.
Ironically enough I just started an "Encylopedia of AI" project, and I've decided to generate all of the content with DeepSeek, with me being an editor/reviewer. I'm not really doing it for anyone except myself but I'm quite enjoying it so far. https://enkuklios.com/
About a decade ago, I read the history of AIDS on Wikipedia. It was a very informative (and satisfying) 20 minute read.
Now it's pages and pages and pages of text: probably factual, but not a satisfying read. It feels like it's for a different audience, and it's not satisfying to read.
Is it AI generated? I don't know for sure, but it feels like either someone (or something)'s missing the point of who Wikipedia's audience is; or that someone is following an agenda, (or that there's an edit war going on between dueling agendas and the facts are added to drown out the "AIDS is a consequence of bad morals" agenda.)
I mean this is good, because AI generated content is explicitly against the guidelines, however I can't help but think there is some utility to be had with AI and online encyclopedias, and we might be missing out on that.
Of course I'd love for this experiment to be done outside of the main site, and only integrated when it's mature, stable, and proven to be actually useful, but other than that implementation concern, I feel this is something that needs to be explored.
If we leave out environmental (energy, datacenters, coolant) and political arguments (copyright stealing, private data harvesting etc.) even if we agree that those are "bad".
What then, is the problem of AI-Generated Content in Wikipedia?
> Fake or misleading citations have become a major worry.
Why is this not a standalone problem? Humans can fake and mislead in citations too, in fact, this is a major problem and has been so, for literally centuries in science.
> Being a place that was, in theory, free from AI slop has become part of Wikipedia’s identity.
Isn't this a separate issue in itself too? One of "quality". If AI generates poor quality content, than I would think the poor quality is the problem, not the producer of it.
The article mentions several times how hard it is to detect AI content. If it is that hard, then obviously AI is doing a good job and producing content that matches that of humans. Why then insist on one type of producer?
Wikipedia can gain a lot by doing a cleanup using AI instead. There’s a lot of incorrect information in Wikipedia that you can easily detect using AI with a prompt like “find something wrong in a few randomly selected Wikipedia articles”. Usually it does find something.
If it’s that easy for me to correct it, it should be automated.
I made my edits and they were immediately reverted by wikipedia's own AI bot. I gave up.
"Low-background Steel: content without AI contamination (jgc.org)" 10.jun.2025 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44239481 269 comments
"Wikipedia: Database Download (wikipedia.org)" 27.apr.2025 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43811732 99 comments
"Low Background Steel (lowbackgroundsteel.ai)" 27.apr.2025 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43814531 2 comments
I was afraid of that. I grabbed a 2024-04-20 copy as a backup, in case it turned to slop, but I suspected it might be tainted already.
Now it's pages and pages and pages of text: probably factual, but not a satisfying read. It feels like it's for a different audience, and it's not satisfying to read.
Is it AI generated? I don't know for sure, but it feels like either someone (or something)'s missing the point of who Wikipedia's audience is; or that someone is following an agenda, (or that there's an edit war going on between dueling agendas and the facts are added to drown out the "AIDS is a consequence of bad morals" agenda.)
https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2020/aug/26/shock-an-aw-...
Of course I'd love for this experiment to be done outside of the main site, and only integrated when it's mature, stable, and proven to be actually useful, but other than that implementation concern, I feel this is something that needs to be explored.
What then, is the problem of AI-Generated Content in Wikipedia?
> Fake or misleading citations have become a major worry.
Why is this not a standalone problem? Humans can fake and mislead in citations too, in fact, this is a major problem and has been so, for literally centuries in science.
> Being a place that was, in theory, free from AI slop has become part of Wikipedia’s identity.
Isn't this a separate issue in itself too? One of "quality". If AI generates poor quality content, than I would think the poor quality is the problem, not the producer of it.
The article mentions several times how hard it is to detect AI content. If it is that hard, then obviously AI is doing a good job and producing content that matches that of humans. Why then insist on one type of producer?
If it’s that easy for me to correct it, it should be automated.