Wikipedia:WikiProject AI Cleanup

WikiProject

AI Cleanup

Welcome to WikiProject AI Cleanup—a collaboration to combat the increasing problem of unsourced, poorly-written AI-generated content on Wikipedia. If you would like to help, add yourself as a participant in the project, inquire on the talk page, and see the to-do list.

Goals

Ever since 2022, large language models (LLMs) like ChatGPT have become a convenient tool for writing at scale. Unfortunately, these models virtually always fail to properly source claims, and are often seen introducing errors. Essays like WP:LLM strongly encourage care in using them for editing articles. These are the project's goals:

• To identify text written by AI, and verify that they follow Wikipedia's policies. Any unsourced, likely inaccurate claims need to be removed.
• To identify AI-generated images and ensure appropriate usage.
• To help and keep track of AI-using editors who may not realize their deficiencies as a writing tool

The purpose of this project is not to restrict or ban the use of AI in articles, but to verify that its output is acceptable and constructive, and to fix or remove it otherwise.

Editing advice

• Tag articles with appropriate templates, remove unsourced information, and warn users who add unsourced AI-generated content to articles.
• Identifying AI-assisted edits is difficult in most cases since the generated text is often indistinguishable from human text. Some exceptions are if the text contains phrases like "as an AI model" or "as of my last knowledge update" and if the editor copy-pasted the prompt used to generate the text together with the AI response. Other indications include the presence of fake references or other obvious AI hallucinations. AI content sometimes takes a promotional tone, reading like a tourism website. Other times, the AI gets confused and will write about a hotel instead of a nearby village. Automatic AI detectors like GPTZero are unreliable and should not be used.
• When missing more precise information, AI will often describe in detail very generic and common features, praising a village for its fertile farmlands, livestock and scenic countryside despite it being in an arid mountain range.
• AI content is not always "unsourced" - sometimes it has real sources that are unrelated to the article's topic, sometimes it creates its own fake sources, and sometimes it uses legitimate sources to create the AI content. Be careful when removing bad AI content not to remove legitimate sources, and always check the cited sources for legitimacy.
  • Example: the article Leninist historiography was entirely written by AI and previously included a list of completely fake sources in Russian and Hungarian at the bottom of the page. Google turned up no results for these sources.
  • Other example: the article Estola albosignata, about a beetle species, had paragraphs written by AI sourced to actual German and French sources. While the sourced articles were real, they were completely off-topic, with the French one discussing an unrelated genus of crabs.
• Sometimes entire articles are AI-generated, and in such a case, make sure to check that the topic is legitimate and notable. Occasionally, hoaxes have made it onto Wikipedia because AI-generated content created fake citations to appear legitimate.
  • Example: the article Amberlihisar was created in January 2023, passed articles for creation, and was not discovered to be entirely fictional until December 2023. It has since now been deleted.

Participants

Primary contact: Chaotıċ Enby (talk · contribs) • 3df (talk)  • ^Queenof_Hearts

Feel free to add yourself here!

1. 3df (talk) 02:59, 4 December 2023 (UTC) - founding member
2. Chaotıċ Enby (talk · contribs) 03:00, 4 December 2023 (UTC) - founding member
3. ^Queenof_Hearts 03:00, 4 December 2023 (UTC) - founding member
4. ARandomName123 (talk · contribs) 03:02, 4 December 2023 (UTC)
5. Fermiboson (talk) 03:03, 4 December 2023 (UTC)
6. Kline • talk to me! • contribs 03:04, 4 December 2023 (UTC)
7. sawyer / talk 03:04, 4 December 2023 (UTC)
8. LilianaUwU ^{(talk / contributions)} 03:15, 4 December 2023 (UTC)
9. Ca ^{talk to me!} 03:45, 4 December 2023 (UTC)
10. Neonorange (talk to Phil) (he, they) 09:02, 4 December 2023 (UTC)
11. Jondvdsn1 (talk) 11:40, 4 December 2023 (UTC)
12. Chlod (say hi!) 16:59, 4 December 2023 (UTC)
13. TheBritinator (talk) 17:03, 4 December 2023 (UTC)
14. Generalissima (talk) 17:55, 4 December 2023 (UTC)
15. Anemonemma (talk) 18:39, 4 December 2023 (UTC)
16. Vermont (🐿️—🏳️‍🌈) 00:30, 5 December 2023 (UTC)
17. Est. 2021 (talk · contribs) 11:19, 5 December 2023 (UTC)
18. Alalch E. 23:56, 5 December 2023 (UTC)
19. Davest3r08 >:) ^(talk) 18:05, 6 December 2023 (UTC)
20. NegativeMP1 00:51, 7 December 2023 (UTC)
21. jp×g🗯️ 01:29, 7 December 2023 (UTC)
22. Fuzheado | Talk 11:37, 8 December 2023 (UTC)
23. Aurodea108 (talk) 05:04, 13 December 2023 (UTC)
24. Cremastra (talk) 22:11, 14 December 2023 (UTC)
25. DrowssapSMM 23:40, 19 December 2023 (UTC)
26. EspWikiped (talk) 15:34, 20 December 2023 (UTC)
27. Logie1 (talk) 01:58, 23 December 2023 (UTC)
28. skarz (talk) 19:57, 24 December 2023 (UTC)
29. DoubleGrazing (talk) 12:31, 15 January 2024 (UTC)
30. Remsense诉 03:13, 8 February 2024 (UTC)
31. Geardona (talk to me?) 23:59, 12 February 2024 (UTC)
32. Elsa_Versailles (talk) 22:11, 23 February 2024 (UTC)
33. Davidvacca 13:24, 24 February 2024 (UTC)
34. Adleid (talk) 08:10, 12 March 2024 (UTC)
35. Ljleppan (talk) 08:12, 12 March 2024 (UTC)
36. Yamantakks (talk) 03:26, 19 March 2024 (UTC)
37. GraziePrego (talk) 05:53, 3 April 2024 (UTC)

Resources

Essays

• Large language models
• Using neural network language models on Wikipedia

Information

• AI - Article text generation
• Perennial sources - ChatGPT
• LLM dungeon, a list of LLM-created articles with bogus sources maintained by JPxG
• LLM demonstration 1 & LLM demonstration 2, experiments with AI and Wikipedia done by JPxG
• AI Images and German Wikipedia

Relevant archived discussions

These threads may be useful for editors seeking information about how AI has previously been handled on Wikipedia.

• Village pump (policy) – Wikipedia response to chatbot-generated content (December 2022) – discussion regarding the use of chatbots in Wikipedia articles
• ANI – Suspected hoax content and LLM use by User:Gyan.Know (March–April 2023) – investigation of AI use by an editor, which then develops into broader discussion and investigation of AI-generated articles

Project resources

• List of uses of ChatGPT at Wikipedia
• Articles using ChatGPT as a reference
• Possible AI-using editors
• AI images in non-AI contexts
• AI cleanup thread in the Wikimedia discord

Templates

WikiProject templates

• {{WikiProject AI Cleanup}} – project banner
• {{User WP AI Cleanup}} – a userbox

Article

• {{AI-generated}} – maintenance tag; adds the article to Category:Articles containing suspected AI-generated texts
  • {{AI-generated inline}} – inline version

Warning

• {{Uw-ai1}}, {{Uw-ai2}}, {{Uw-ai3}} – for warning users