Wikipedia Strained by AI Scrapers

Wikipedia has seen a significant rise in traffic, stressing its infrastructure. Since January 2024, bandwidth for multimedia content has increased by 50%. This surge is attributed to AI scrapers, automated systems that continuously collect content for AI training. Unlike human users who access popular content, these scrapers request all available data, including less-accessed content stored in the U.S. data center. This puts constant pressure on the system and can cause performance issues during traffic spikes. The Wikimedia Foundation is exploring solutions to reduce automated traffic.