Wikipedia adopts new guidelines for text generation AI, prohibiting the creation of article text in principle.

The English Wikipedia has finalized guidelines that, in principle, prohibit the use of text generation AI like ChatGPT to generate or rewrite article text. Only basic proofreading assistance for text you have written yourself and translation assistance following prescribed procedures are permitted.

Wikipedia:Writing articles with large language models - Wikipedia
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Writing_articles_with_large_language_models

Wikipedia:Writing articles with large language models/RfC - Wikipedia
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Writing_articles_with_large_language_models/RfC

In December 2025, the English Wikipedia also held a discussion regarding article creation using text generation AI, and while there was agreement that better guidelines were needed, no guidelines were formalized at that time. Subsequently, editor Chaotic Enby submitted a revised draft with clearer content on March 15, 2026, and discussions and voting closed on March 20, 2026. The voting results showed 44 votes in favor and 2 against, indicating 'clear and strong support.'

Following these results, a new guideline titled 'Writing articles with large language models' was added to the English Wikipedia. This guideline explicitly states that 'article content should not be written using text generation AI,' and prohibits its use for creating or rewriting article content because text generated by text generation AI is prone to violating Wikipedia's basic rules.

However, there are two exceptions to the ban on using AI-generated text. One is 'basic editing of text you have written yourself.' Provided that the AI does not introduce new information or original content, it is permitted to have the AI make suggestions to improve grammar and expression after a human has reviewed the text.

Another exception is 'translation.' It is permitted to use text generation AI when transferring articles from non-English Wikipedias to the English Wikipedia. However, in that case, a separate translation rule must be followed, which states that 'the article must not be included unless it has been reviewed by a person fluent in both the original language and English.'

The guidelines also state that users should not be penalized simply because their writing 'looks like it was written by an AI.' Since some people write in a style similar to AI-generated text, the guidelines state that decisions should not be based solely on style and phrasing, but should also be made based on whether the content adheres to Wikipedia's basic rules and what kind of edits the editor has made recently.

A key focus of this proposal was to stop using AI to generate entire articles. While AI-generated text can produce a large volume of text in a short time, the burden of having humans review, correct, and delete sentences afterward is enormous. Since this review and correction is mainly handled by volunteer editors, it has been pointed out that this creates an unfair burden. Furthermore, the tendency to dismiss the inclusion of non-existent sources or content that violates Wikipedia's policies as 'something the tool did' was also criticized.

On the other hand, discussions regarding this proposal have praised it for limiting the use of problematic text-generating AI while not uniformly prohibiting relatively reasonable uses such as basic text editing and translation. Furthermore, the inclusion of wording that prevents unfounded suspicion against editors who write in a style similar to that of text-generating AI has also been cited as a reason for its support.