Source: The Verge
The Wikimedia Foundation's intervention in multiple AI copyright lawsuits reflects a genuine structural threat to commons-based platforms: if courts decide training data requires individual licensing from rightsholders, the economic model of Wikipedia collapses while simultaneously locking down the training data that made recent AI systems possible. Wikimedia's position—likely supporting fair use for training while opposing mass scraping without attribution—signals that even organizations built on radical openness see unrestricted AI training as incompatible with their survival. The dispute exposes a collision between two competing definitions of "open."