Wikipedia turns a quarter of a century old. The ultimate challenge with Ai
In a quarter of a century, the online encyclopaedia has become the heritage of digital humanity. But now artificial intelligence threatens its model: declining traffic and new challenges on the horizon
Today Wikipedia turns a quarter of a century old. With more than 60 million entries in total and an army of 300,000 monthly active volunteers, the free online encyclopaedia has built in twenty-five years what the United Nations has recognised as a 'digital public good'. Founded in 2001 by Jimmy Wales and Larry Sanger, it now boasts 350 language editions and almost two billion unique monthly hits. Impressive numbers, which also include the Italian language version, born in May 2001, four months after the English version. With 3 million registered users, 2 million entries, 7 billion consultations in 2025 alone, and an average of 30,000 active contributors each month, the Italian version is among the most consulted in the world.
"When it was founded, the internet was decentralised, fragmented into forums, noticeboards and chats. However, it was a place for dialogue and mutual exchange of ideas, and from this Wikipedia has drawn its strength," commented Ferdinando Traversa, President of Wikimedia Italia. A heritage built from the bottom up, thanks to the collaboration of millions of people and self-financing based on user donations. A model that could seem almost utopian and that has instead worked over the years, resisting the advent of social networks, entertainment platforms and, so far, even artificial intelligence.
Threats to face: falling traffic, AI and Elon Musk
Generative artificial intelligence is probably the most insidious challenge since the birth of Wikipedia. According to data from the Wikimedia Foundation released last October, the number of views in 2025 decreased by 8% compared to the previous year. The cause, according to the online encyclopaedia, is the increasing use of generative AI tools, ChatGPT and the like. There is no longer any need to delve deeper by clicking on links: chatbots have become the new oracles. A trend accentuated by AI-enhanced search engines, such as Google's AI Overview, capable of providing immediate answers without referring to third-party sites. Answers that, paradoxically, it is often Wikipedia itself that provides to artificial intelligence. There is significant data to confirm this: in the first half of 2025, traffic on Wikipedia increased by 50 per cent, but not due to a renewed interest on the part of users. It was generated by the bots of AI companies, which downloaded texts, images and videos en masse to train their models.
A phenomenon that in the long run risks undermining the foundations of the project. "On the one hand, the reduction in visits is likely to result in fewer volunteers writing and updating content, but also in fewer donations to keep the project going," explained Marshall Miller of the Wikimedia Foundation, sounding a well-founded alarm: while access to Wikipedia continues to remain free and copyright-free, the servers are costing more and more.
A further blow comes from direct competition. In October, Elon Musk launched Grokipedia, an encyclopaedia powered by X's AI, openly positioned as an alternative to Wikipedia. Launched on 27 October 2025 with approximately 885,000 articles, Grokipedia uses the Grok language model to generate, verify, and update content in real time. Musk accused Wikipedia of having left-wing political biases and described his creature as a 'search for truth' without ideological filters. The reality, however, is more nuanced: independent analyses have shown that many Grokipedia articles are copied almost verbatim from Wikipedia and that, when they deviate from it, they tend to include conspiracy theories or controversial content.
