Mastodawn

AI translated articles swapped sources or added unsourced sentences with no explanation, while others added paragraphs sourced from completely unrelated material.

https://www.404media.co/ai-translations-are-adding-hallucinations-to-wikipedia-articles/

AI Translations Are Adding ‘Hallucinations’ to Wikipedia Articles

AI translated articles swapped sources or added unsourced sentences with no explanation, while others added paragraphs sourced from completely unrelated material.

404 Media

@404mediaco wtaf? no AI slop in wikipedia please

@404mediaco can we all stop pretending this crap is ready to be useful?

Disisdeguey🔻PalestineAction🇵🇸Mar 4

@404mediaco Wait, #StupidAI in #Wikipedia????
No no,no,noooo.

MidgePhoto Mar 4

@404mediaco how do they do with back-translations, reversing from their translation to compare with the original?

This is a huge scam.

The Orange Theme Mar 4

@404mediaco Where's Mozilla to tell me it's fine and actually I should just shut up and like this?

Greg Bell Mar 4

@404mediaco it's ok if you read to the end they learned their lesson: they will now ask another LLM to check the first one. What are the odds that *two* make-things-up machines will both make things up?

Stephen Dioxide

@404mediaco I'm a translator, and I've tested AI. When it's good, it's quite good. When it's bad, it gaps out clauses, adds random words, flips the meaning of sentences, and makes paragraphs incomprehensible.

Hanno Rein Mar 4

@404mediaco is there an easy to use frozen pre-AI version of Wikipedia?

@hannorein
It seems there is. https://ideatrash.net/2025/10/how-to-have-wikipedia-including-pre-ai-versions-locally-and-even-in-your-pocket.html
@404mediaco

How To Have Wikipedia — Including Pre-AI Versions — Locally, And Even In Your Pocket

It is easier than you think... and free!

ideatrash

Hanno Rein Mar 5

@ozzelot @404mediaco Cool. Thanks!

sunflowerinrain Mar 5

@404mediaco
I'm horrified, and considered cancelling the monthly donation to #Wikimedia with an explanation of why.

#Wikipedia has been a main source of information which I've trusted because of dedicated human editors. If "AI" has infested it, where's the trust?

@sunflowerinrain As the article says, Wikipedia is actively discussing on how to prevent this. The slop articles are produced by a different organization. Though I couldn't find where *they* get their funding from, it appears it's not Wikipedia's money that's spent on slop here. They just have to deal with the fallout of those "contributions".

sunflowerinrain Mar 5

@guenther @404mediaco
I hope the discussions work. My first, angry, reaction was to want Wikipedia to block/ban them immediately.

@404mediaco That organization also plagiarized its name. The Open Knowledge Foundation (@okfde) is a legitimate and well-established NGO doing open data related work. Calling themselves "Open Knowledge Association" to flood Wikipedia with slop is an attack on the OKF's good reputation.

Guillotine Jones, Flâneur Mar 7

@404mediaco
Because: Disruption!

Please Wikipedia, stop using LLMs. There are no upsides to them, all the output they produce is trash. It's going to take decades to correct all the crap they've done once people realise they are useless.