Wikipedia’s editors voted 40 to 2 for a policy prohibiting large language models from generating or rewriting article content. The rule does not ban every use of AI. Contributors may accept basic copyediting suggestions on their own writing after human review, provided the system adds no new information. The distinction protects a volunteer encyclopedia whose authority depends on traceable sources, negotiated wording, and editors who can be challenged when a claim is unsupported.

The policy arrives at a paradoxical moment. AI companies train systems on Wikipedia, while those same systems can now produce plausible entries that threaten the conditions under which the encyclopedia remains trustworthy. Generated prose is inexpensive, patient, and difficult to distinguish at scale, but it can smooth uncertainty into confidence and detach statements from the sources that supposedly sustain them. Wikipedia’s response treats writing as an accountable process rather than the final arrangement of sentences. A citation must have been read; an interpretation must belong to someone willing to defend it. The human edit carries accountability beyond a stylistic preference. It is a line of responsibility inside a knowledge system increasingly consumed by machines. The encyclopedia may use automation around its margins, but it refuses to let fluent synthesis replace the social work through which facts become public.