Wikipedia volunteers develop tools to detect AI-generated text

WikiProject AI Cleanup is a volunteer initiative created in 2023 to find and remove AI-generated material that violates Wikipedia’s rules. In an interview with IEEE Spectrum, founding member Ellia Lebleu said the signals, once marked by easily recognizable clichés, have become more structural: patterns such as the “rule of three,” negative parallelisms, and articles produced within minutes. Fake citations, or citations that do not support the claims they accompany, are also a major concern.

According to Lebleu, an analysis using the detection tool Pangram—described as a conservative lower-bound estimate—flagged AI in about 20% of new articles and drafts in late 2025 and 15% to 16% in early 2026. It is not yet clear whether the decline reflects Wikipedia’s new policies or more capable models. Volunteers are also using an AI-based source verifier, while the Wikimedia Foundation is developing Paste Check to identify text pasted directly from some chatbots.