Wikipedia Pageviews Drop 8%; Generative AI Believed the Reason

The artificial intelligence disruption of existing functions, jobs and businesses continues, with a new bit of evidence coming from Wikipedia. 

“We are seeing declines in human pageviews on Wikipedia over the past few months, amounting to a decrease of roughly eight percent as compared to the same months in 2024,” Wikipedia says. “We believe that these declines reflect the impact of generative AI and social media on how people seek information, especially with search engines providing answers directly to searchers, often based on Wikipedia content.”

“These declines are not unexpected,” Wikipedia says. “Search engines are increasingly using generative AI to provide answers directly to searchers rather than linking to sites like ours.”

“Many other publishers and content platforms are reporting similar shifts as users spend more time on search engines, AI chatbots, and social media to find information.”

By some estimates, website traffic declines of 15 percent to 70 percent might happen because of AI chatbot substitution. Anecdotally, my own use of Wikipedia has dropped to virtually zero, as I find AI overviews in Google search are an absolutely satisfactory alternative. 

Sector	Possible Change/Disruption	Quantitative Data on Shifts (Where Available)	Notes/Source
Journalism & Media	Automation of article/video generation; reduced human roles; content scraping without payment	Proportion of people believing journalists often use AI up by at least 3 percentage points in 2025; existential threat intensifying financial crisis	https://reutersinstitute.politics.ox.ac.uk/generative-ai-and-news-report-2025-how-people-think-about-ais-role-journalism-and-society
Creative Industries (e.g., Writing, Design)	Job losses and diminished worker agency; shift to reviewing AI output	300 million global jobs (9.1% of workforce) at risk; 77,999 tech job losses linked to AI in early 2025; 58% decline in tech hiring from 2024 to 2025	https://www.nu.edu/blog/ai-job-statistics/
Website/Content Publishers	Traffic diversion via AI search summaries	15-64% decline in organic traffic from AI Overviews; up to 70% drop for some sites; educational platforms saw ~50% decline	https://www.forbes.com/sites/torconstantino/2025/04/14/the-60-problem---how-ai-search-is-draining-your-traffic/
Stock Photography	Erosion of licensing revenues; AI generators replacing stock libraries	Stock photo market at $6.1B in 2025 (projected to $11.3B by 2032); AI image gen market from $350M (2023) to $1.1B by 2030	https://colinritman.medium.com/comprehensive-analysis-of-stock-photography-revenue-potential-a-2025-market-assessment-0b881c4d1703
Music Industry	AI tracks flooding streams; reduced royalties for human artists	AI-generated music could take 20% of streaming revenues by 2028; platforms using AI to lower royalty costs	https://info.xposuremusic.com/article/how-ai-generated-music-could-impact-music-catalog-valuations
Education (Textbooks, Online Courses)	Shift to AI-personalized materials; reduced demand for static content	No direct loss stats yet; concerns on plagiarism/accuracy prominent; AI reimagining textbooks for adaptive learning	https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2666920X24000225
Overall Online Content	AI dominance in creation; commoditization of human work	Estimates suggest 90% of online content AI-generated; 750M apps integrating AI models	https://seedblink.com/blog/2025-04-23-generative-ai-and-the-future-of-content-creation-at-scale