Throughout our training modules (including this specific module), students will receive guidance on how to thoughtfully and critically use generative AI tools to support their work on Wikipedia – and only if permitted by their instructor’s policies.

Students should NOT use AI chatbot tools like ChatGPT, Gemini, Grammarly, or Claude to generate text for Wikipedia. They should never copy and paste output from an AI tool into a Wikipedia article. Students should only add text to Wikipedia that they have written themselves.

Why not? Generative AI tools do a poor job writing about things missing from Wikipedia, because their own knowledge is largely based on what’s already on Wikipedia. While AI tools can generate text that appears fact-based and suggest sources that look real, they can fabricate “facts” and “hallucinate” sources – and adding fake or misrepresentative content to Wikipedia will make it worse for everyone, not better. It can also lead to a negative editing experience on Wikipedia for the student who adds the AI-generated text to an article, as Wikipedia’s community of volunteer editors spend considerable effort deleting any text they suspect may be AI-generated.

With responsible and intentional use, we suggest the following potential ways AI tools can assist students working on Wikipedia assignments:

• Confirming that they’ve identified all information gaps in a Wikipedia article
  
• Finding access to sources they want to read and cite
  
• Discovering helpful sources they didn’t find in their own research

These ideas are explained in detail in our “Using generative AI tools with Wikipedia” training module, and are only suggested for courses in which the use of AI tools is permitted.