Overview
- English Wikipedia adopted a community policy that blocks the use of large language models to generate or rewrite article text, passing an editor vote 44–2 after a formal request for comment authored by administrator Chaotic Enby.
- Editors may still use AI to suggest basic copyedits to their own prose if they verify the result does not change meaning, and they may use AI for a first-pass translation if they follow the site’s translation rules and can check the source language.
- Enforcement will rely on human review because AI-detection tools are unreliable, and moderators are told not to punish editors based only on writing style, which can resemble model output.
- Supporters warn that AI-written passages can smuggle in errors that then get scraped into future model training data, and they point to the suspected autonomous agent TomWikiAssist as proof that bots can post in seconds while cleanup takes hours.
- The decision applies only to the English edition, and other language communities set their own rules, with Spanish Wikipedia already barring AI for creating or expanding articles without the English site’s copyedit or translation carve-outs.