Wikimedia Foundation, which runs Wikipedia and other free-licensed sites, has said that robotic AI scrapers are placing a huge strain on its servers, with automated bots trawling huge numbers of data to train AI models.
Since January 2024, the foundation’s bandwidth used for downloading multimedia content has grown by 50% and stresses that without proper attribution, it places a great technical and financial strain on the ecosystem that sustains itself through volunteer work.
When former US President Jimmy Carter died, the surge in traffic caused by users streaming a video related to him doubled Wikimedia’s normal network traffic, highlighting the issue.
Fedora, GNOME and other open platforms have been forced to block certain jurisdictions and implement proof-of-work challenges to filter access to bots.
