ChatGPT: Will Wikipedia be written by the OpenAI chatbot? The founder thinks about it

ChatGPT is undoubtedly the topic of the moment. The OpenAI Chatbot is on everyone's lips, so much so that in Italy it has even been banned by the Guarantor for the protection of personal data due to the illegal collection of personal data and the absence of systems for verifying the age of minors.

Today, however, we are talking about ChatGPT as a viable human substitute for writing on the most famous online encyclopedia, Wikipedia. Jimmy Wales, the founder of Wikipedia, has made some statements on the subject, admitting interest but also cautious skepticism.

"I think we're still a long way from 'ChatGPT, please write a Wikipedia entry on the Empire State Building', but I don't know how much, certainly closer than I would have thought two years ago," Wales told a British newspaper The Evening Standards.

Wales later added that ChatGPT is not currently ready to write content to Wikipedia, due to numerous flaws. “He has a tendency to make things up out of thin air, which is really bad for Wikipedia, it's not good. We have to be very careful about that,” Wales added.

Despite this, however, there are some interesting ideas that have caught the attention of the founder of Wikipedia. According to Wales, ChatGPT's artificial intelligence could help see if there are mutually contradicting statements in two Wikipedia entries, or identify tensions where one article seems to be saying something slightly different from the other.

"A human could detect this, but you should read both articles side-by-side and think about it. If you automate the feed so you get hundreds of examples, I think our community could find it very useful," Wales concluded.