Wikipedia’s parent company, Wikimedia, announced several new deals last week to enhance AI model training capabilities.
one in releaseWikimedia said it would work with major tech companies including Amazon, Meta, and Perplexity. Under the deal, these companies are now part of Wikimedia Enterprise, and will pay to access Wikipedia’s data to train and develop their AI Foundation models. Financial details of the deals were not disclosed.
Wikimedia Enterprise was founded to allow large-scale reuse and distribution of content from the company’s projects, including Wikipedia.
The offering is pitched as an alternative to the typical web scraping that large language models perform to answer user queries and as a means of gaining human-centric knowledge at a time where data authenticity is coming under increasing scrutiny.
“All of these organizations use Wikimedia Enterprise to integrate human-curated knowledge into their platforms at scale,” the blog post reads. “By doing so, they help ensure that the work of our global volunteer community reaches billions of people with the accuracy and transparency that Wikipedia represents.”
The companies join Wikimedia’s existing list of partners, which includes Ecosia, Nomic, Plius, Prorata, and most notably Google, with the tech major announcing a partnership in 2022.
The news comes as part of Wikimedia’s 25th anniversary, and as the company looks to carve out a place for itself in the age of AI.
Selena Deckelman, chief product and technology officer at the Wikimedia Foundation, said in a separate article, “Wikipedia shows that knowledge is human, and knowledge needs humans. Especially now, in the age of AI, we need Wikipedia’s human-driven knowledge more than ever.” statement On the anniversary of the company.
He said, “With the continued help of readers, volunteer editors, donors, partners, and fans around the world, Wikipedia will continue to be the vital center of human-powered knowledge and online collaboration for the next 25 years and beyond.”
