From Wikipedia to AI summaries: Who controls the truth?

In 2025, Google’s AI Overviews have become a key feature of online search, offering users instant, summarised answers to their queries. These summaries, powered by generative AI, are changing how people interact with information online, often bypassing traditional sources like Wikipedia. While this shift gives convenience, it also raises critical questions about accuracy, transparency, and the control of online information. 

Wikipedia, the self-styled online encyclopedia which is curated by a diligent community of editors, recently tested its own AI-generated summaries. The experiment was met with strong resistance from its editorial community, who argued that AI undermines the platform’s core values of traceability and human oversight. The backlash has seen this test be paused, highlighting the tension between automation and trust in public knowledge platforms. 

Meanwhile, Google’s AI Overviews appeared last year – firstly to replace Wikipedia’s information panels on Google search before continuing to evolve, drawing heavily from a select group of sources. This presents another challenge in itself to Wikipedia as I would imagine (I haven’t seen published data, but clicks as a whole are reported to be down as a result of AI overviews) traffic has significantly reduced to the site while people can so readily access AI overviews from one Google search. Research shows that Wikipedia, Reddit, YouTube, Quora, and TrustPilot are among the most frequently cited sites, which Google uses to curate all information into one panel for users. Surprisingly(!!), Google’s own properties appear in nearly half of all AI Overviews. This concentration of sources to Google owned properties suggests an element of information gatekeeping and raises questions over neutrality and reliability.

For businesses, this presents both a challenge and an opportunity. Traditional SEO strategies may no longer guarantee visibility if AI summaries dominate the top of search results. Instead, businesses should focus on creating authoritative, well-structured content that AI can easily reference. This includes using informational keywords, and publishing content that answers specific user questions with clarity and depth. Individuals and teams must also adapt by investing in digital literacy. Understanding how AI-generated content is sourced, evaluated, and presented is going to be critical to navigating this new landscape. Businesses should look to understand how they will be presented online with the sources available to AI tools, and recognise the opportunities and threats that this presents.  

Ultimately, the rise of AI summaries marks a shift from human-curated knowledge to machine-generated insight. While this evolution offers speed and scale, we should also be vigilant. Businesses that embrace transparency, invest in content quality, and prioritise human expertise will be best positioned to thrive in an AI-driven information economy.