AI bots strain Wikimedia as bandwidth surges 50%

image via Ars Technica

April 2, 2025, 5:06 PM

• •Automated bots seeking AI model training data for LLMs have been vacuuming up terabytes of data, growing the foundation's bandwidth used for downloading multimedia content by 50 percent since January 2024.
• •The impact isn’t theoretical. The foundation says that when former US President Jimmy Carter died in December 2024, his Wikipedia page predictably drew millions of views. But the real stress came when users simultaneously streamed a 1.5-hour video of a 1980 debate from Wikimedia Commons. The surge doubled Wikimedia’s normal network traffic, temporarily maxing out several of its Internet connections.
• •Wikimedia acknowledges the importance of providing "knowledge as a service
• • and its content is indeed freely licensed. But as the Foundation states plainly
• •Our content is free, our infrastructure is not.
• •

Automated AI bots are scraping Wikipedia's servers for training data, putting strain on the foundation's infrastructure. This has led to increased bandwidth costs and technical challenges. The Wikimedia Foundation is calling on AI developers to use more sustainable access methods and contribute to the infrastructure that makes open knowledge accessible.

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