Wikipedia stops AI-generated summary features after community says it can harm trust: ‘This would do immediate and irreversible…’

The Wikimedia Foundation has paused its trial of AI-generated article summaries on Wikipedia following sharp criticism from the community of volunteer editors, says a 404Media report. The experiment, which began earlier this month, aimed to show short, machine-generated summaries at the top of Wikipedia articles on mobile. However, it faced immediate and overwhelming backlash. The report quotes one editor who said, “Just because Google has rolled out its AI summaries doesn’t mean we need to one-up them… This would do immediate and irreversible harm to our readers and to our reputation as a decently trustworthy and serious source.” Another simply wrote, “Yuck.”