Prime Highlight
- Wikimedia partnered with leading AI companies like Amazon, Meta, and Microsoft to offer paid access to Wikipedia data via its official API.
- The move supports ethical AI training by replacing web scraping with structured, human-reviewed knowledge.
Key Facts
- The partnerships were completed over the past year but revealed publicly during Wikimedia’s 25th anniversary.
- Companies access the data through Wikimedia Enterprise, alongside existing clients such as Google and Ecosia.
Background
Wikimedia, the parent organisation of Wikipedia, has announced partnerships with several leading artificial intelligence companies, including Amazon, Meta, Microsoft, Mistral AI and Perplexity, to provide paid access to its data for developing large language models. The announcement was made through a blog post as part of Wikimedia’s 25th anniversary celebrations.
Under these agreements, the tech companies will use Wikipedia’s official API through Wikimedia Enterprise instead of collecting information by web scraping. Wikimedia said this approach supports ethical data use and ensures that AI systems rely on structured, human-reviewed knowledge.
Although the partnerships were finalised over the past year, they were not publicly disclosed until now. Wikimedia said all partner organisations use Wikimedia Enterprise to integrate reliable and community-governed content into their platforms at scale.
“These organisations rely on Wikimedia Enterprise to bring trusted human knowledge into their products,” the organisation said in its statement.
The new partners join existing clients such as Google, Ecosia, Pleias and ProRata. Google was among the first companies to sign up for Wikimedia Enterprise in 2022, recognising Wikipedia as a key source of factual information for search and AI tools.
A spokesperson for the Wikimedia Foundation said Wikipedia plays a major role in powering generative AI tools, including chatbots, search engines, and voice assistants. The spokesperson added that the future of AI depends on sustaining open knowledge platforms like Wikipedia, which are built and maintained by human contributors.
The rapid growth of artificial intelligence has increased concerns around data rights and the use of human-created content. Platforms such as Wikipedia and Reddit have faced growing scrutiny over how their data is used to train AI systems.
Meanwhile, Elon Musk launched an AI-based alternative called “Grokipedia” last year. The platform, powered by xAI’s Grok model, positions itself as less biased, with all entries generated by artificial intelligence rather than human editors.
