The Wikimedia Foundation reported that online encyclopedia, Wikipedia, has been bombarded by AI Bot crawlers since the beginning of last year. These bots have caused the site’s bandwidth to surge by 50% more than usual, downloading files or watching embedded videos from the Wikimedia Commons.
The sudden spike in traffic by AI Bots means that access to Wikipedia’s pages and assets, most especially during high-interest events. One example that Wikimedia cites is the death of former US President Jimmy Carter – his death in December last year saw a surge of traffic in his presidency, most particularly with a video of his debate with another former US President, Ronald Reagan.
While the increased traffic was, as Wikimedia deems, manageable, the bandwidth surge from the current AI Bot crawlers just makes things worse for Wikipedia, as a whole. Even worse, the foundation points out that approximately 65% of its most expensive traffic actually comes from those bots.
The real problem though, is that the “expansion happened largely without sufficient attribution, which is key to drive new users to participate in the movement.” In other words, it’s hoping that this report will raise renewed awareness of the situation and draw more donations for its cause.
“Our content is free, our infrastructure is not”.
(Source: Wikimedia Foundation)
