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Usually, no. English Wikipedia’s current guidance prohibits using a large language model (LLM) to generate a new article or rewrite substantial article prose, even in a draft or user space. It allows only narrow, reviewed uses: basic mechanical copyediting of your own writing and translation under the separate translation guidance. AI can also help you brainstorm questions or locate possible sources, but its output is not a source and must never replace checking the published material yourself.
The short answer for English Wikipedia
The English Wikipedia community guidance on large language models says that using an LLM to generate or rewrite article content is prohibited, except for translation and basic copyediting of one’s own work. The page also says that LLM-generated or modified text should be identified in the edit summary. These are community-maintained rules, not a universal policy for every language edition or every Wikimedia project.
In practical terms, asking a chatbot to produce an article, expand a stub, rewrite several paragraphs, or “improve” an existing page is outside the permitted use. Pasting the result into a sandbox, draft, or personal user page does not avoid the restriction; the guidance specifically says that generated text should not be added directly to drafts either.
The answer changes only for limited tasks. A localized grammar or punctuation correction to text you wrote yourself may be acceptable after careful human review. Translation is addressed by a separate guideline and still requires checking the meaning, sources, neutrality, and other Wikipedia requirements. Using AI to suggest search terms or possible source leads is an ancillary aid, not permission to publish the model’s prose.
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What the policy permits, restricts, and leaves to other guidance
| Task | Position under current English Wikipedia LLM guidance | Conditions |
|---|---|---|
| Generate a new article | Prohibited | Do not paste model-written prose into mainspace, a draft, or user space. |
| Add substantial new prose to an existing article | Prohibited | Human editing of a generated draft does not make the generation step acceptable. |
| Fundamentally rephrase or stylistically rewrite text | Prohibited | A broad rewrite is more than mechanical copyediting. |
| Basic copyediting of your own writing | Narrowly allowed | Keep changes local, compare them with the original meaning, and review every change yourself. |
| Translate Wikipedia material | Separate, limited exception | Follow the translation guidance and verify meaning, citations, neutrality, and attribution. |
| Brainstorm topics, gaps, or search terms | Adjacent assistance, not article writing | Treat every suggestion as an unverified lead and do the source and editorial work yourself. |
The boundary is the degree of intervention. Fixing a comma or an obvious spelling error in your own sentence is materially different from asking a model to make the sentence more persuasive, authoritative, or encyclopedic. If the tool introduces, removes, or recasts a factual claim, the change is no longer merely mechanical.
Can AI write a new Wikipedia article?
No. Do not use ChatGPT or another chatbot to draft a new Wikipedia article for publication. The prohibition covers generated article prose regardless of whether the topic is obscure, whether the draft is later edited by a person, or whether the text sounds accurate. Fluent wording is not evidence that the underlying claims are true, notable, neutral, or sourced.
Why a draft or sandbox is not a workaround
Wikipedia’s LLM information page says that LLM outputs should not be added directly into drafts. A draft is still intended to become Wikipedia content, so moving generated text out of mainspace does not change the nature of the activity. You may write a draft yourself from reliable sources, but the prose and editorial decisions must be your own.
What to do instead
- Define the article’s scope and identify the claims that need support.
- Read reliable, published sources that are appropriate for those claims.
- Write a neutral summary in your own words while keeping the sources open for checking.
- Add citations that point to the actual publications, not to a chatbot response.
- Ask experienced editors for feedback if you are unsure about notability, neutrality, or sourcing.
An AI system can help you formulate questions to investigate, but it cannot supply the publishable article or make the editorial judgment for you.
Can AI edit or improve an existing Wikipedia page?
Not when “edit” means generating new wording, rewriting paragraphs, changing the style, or adding substantive explanation. Those actions fall under generating or rewriting article content. A human’s later proofreading does not turn a prohibited rewrite into an allowed one.
The narrow copyediting exception
The English guidance allows basic copyediting of your own work. Examples include correcting spelling, punctuation, capitalization, contractions, straightforward formatting, removing redundant wording, or splitting an overlong sentence. The correction should be localized and mechanical: the factual proposition, emphasis, and scope remain the same.
Human review is required. Read the original and proposed version side by side, then check the result in the surrounding article. Reject a change if it adds a fact, changes who did what, alters the certainty of a statement, removes a qualification, or makes a source appear to support a different claim.
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Requests such as “make this more authoritative,” “rewrite this in an encyclopedic tone,” “expand this explanation,” or “improve the flow of the whole section” invite a stylistic or substantive rewrite. Even if every sentence remains broadly true, the model is deciding how to frame the information and may introduce unsupported implications. Write those passages yourself from the sources instead.
Can AI fix grammar on Wikipedia?
Sometimes, but only within the narrow copyediting exception and only for text you wrote yourself. A safe example is asking for a spelling correction in one sentence, then checking that the correction did not alter a technical term, quotation, named entity, or factual meaning. A risky example is submitting an entire article and accepting the model’s rewritten version.
- Keep the requested change small and identifiable.
- Compare every suggested edit with the source-backed meaning and the article’s context.
- Preserve citations, qualifiers, dates, attribution, and quotation boundaries.
- Undo any change that introduces a new assertion or changes the strength of an existing one.
- Mention LLM-generated or LLM-modified text in the edit summary, as the English guidance requests.
If you did not write the underlying passage yourself, the specific exception for copyediting your own work does not provide a general license to have an AI rewrite it.
Can AI translate a Wikipedia article?
Translation is a separate, limited exception identified by the English Wikipedia LLM page. It does not remove the normal obligations of a Wikipedia editor. You must check that the translation preserves the original meaning, that every citation still supports the translated statement, and that the result meets English Wikipedia’s standards for neutrality, attribution, and verifiability.
Checks a translator must perform
- Compare names, dates, measurements, quotations, and technical terms with the source-language article.
- Confirm that links, templates, references, and citation details point to the intended material.
- Watch for false friends, omitted qualifiers, tense changes, and wording that turns a reported view into Wikipedia’s voice.
- Check whether the translated article needs additional sources for an English-speaking readership.
- Disclose the AI assistance in the edit summary when text was generated or modified by an LLM.
A translation tool can accelerate a first pass, but publication still requires a human who can judge both languages and the encyclopedia’s content rules.
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Why an AI response is not a Wikipedia source
Wikipedia’s verifiability policy requires article claims to be checkable against reliable, published sources. An AI response is not such a source. Models can invent publications, merge details from unrelated pages, give a real citation that does not support the sentence, or omit an important qualification. A confident answer therefore has no evidentiary value until you locate and read the underlying publication.
How to verify a suggested citation
- Open the publication itself rather than relying on the citation text supplied by the model.
- Check that the author, title, publisher, date, and page or section information are real.
- Read enough of the source to confirm that it directly supports the exact claim you plan to write.
- Check whether the source is reliable for that type of statement and whether a more authoritative source is needed.
- Rewrite the sentence if the source supports only a narrower or differently qualified claim.
Material that needs a citation may be removed if it has none, and quotations or challenged or likely-to-be-challenged material require inline citations. Do not cite the chatbot as if it were the publication.
A compliant workflow when AI is part of your process
The following workflow keeps assistance on the research and mechanical side while leaving authorship and judgment with the editor.
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- Set the editorial boundary. Decide whether you are doing a mechanical correction, a translation, or source-oriented planning. If the task is drafting, expanding, or rewriting article prose, stop and write it yourself.
- Use AI only for leads if needed. Ask for possible questions, terminology, or places where an article may lack context. Treat every output as unverified; do not paste its prose into Wikipedia.
- Find the actual sources. Locate reliable, published material independently. Record the source details and read the relevant passages.
- Make the editorial decision yourself. Determine what is notable, relevant, neutral, and supported. Discard a suggested claim when the source is missing, weak, or mismatched.
- Write or revise the passage manually. Keep the wording proportional to the evidence and preserve uncertainty, attribution, and scope.
- Review any permitted mechanical change. For a copyedit or translation, compare the before and after text and inspect citations, links, names, numbers, and qualifiers.
- Document the assistance. Add a clear note in the edit summary when an LLM generated or modified text, as requested by the English Wikipedia guidance.
- Use discussion channels when appropriate. If the change concerns a conflict of interest or is likely to be disputed, propose it on the article’s talk page instead of making a direct edit.
Conflicts of interest and paid editing
AI assistance does not change Wikipedia’s conflict-of-interest expectations. If you are editing about yourself, your employer, a client, or another relationship that could affect your judgment, disclose the conflict when seeking a change. Editors with a conflict are strongly discouraged from directly editing the affected article; they can suggest specific changes on the talk page for independent review.
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Paid editors must disclose the payer, the client, and the relevant affiliation. A chatbot cannot provide independence, and having it write the text does not remove the human editor’s responsibility to disclose the relationship or follow the talk-page proposal route.
Independent reader supportYour contribution helps us test, update, and keep practical guides available for everyone.Why Wikipedia restricts generated prose
The English Wikipedia guidance points to several risks that are particularly serious in an encyclopedia:
- Hallucinated facts and citations: invented details can look plausible and spread quickly when copied into an article.
- Original research: a model may combine fragments into a conclusion that no published source actually makes.
- Unverifiable claims: polished wording can hide the absence of a checkable source.
- Non-neutral framing: generated text may present one side as fact, use promotional language, or omit relevant criticism.
- Libel and privacy harm: false allegations about living people can create serious consequences.
- Copyright and attribution problems: a model may reproduce distinctive wording or blur which source deserves credit.
- Volunteer cleanup: other editors must spend time locating errors, removing unsupported prose, and repairing citations.
Wiki Education Foundation author Sage Ross reached a similar conclusion in a report published January 29, 2026, writing that generative AI chatbots should not be used to generate Wikipedia text because too much of it is likely to be unverifiable. The concern is not whether a particular paragraph sounds good; it is whether every claim can survive source-based editorial scrutiny.
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1Fix the driver behind crashes, sound loss and screen glitches2Clear out junk files and repair common Windows errors3Scan for outdated or missing drivers - takes under a minuteWhat if your language edition has different rules?
The rule described here is for English Wikipedia. Wikipedia is a collection of language editions with locally maintained guidance, and Wikimedia projects can have their own policies. Do not assume that an exception or prohibition in English applies everywhere. Before using AI on another edition, read that project’s current local guidance and any translation or disclosure requirements it references.
Regardless of language, the underlying disciplines remain sound: use reliable published sources, preserve neutrality, check the original meaning in a translation, and make your use of automated text transparent where the project asks you to do so.
Quick Recap
Decision checklist before you click Publish
- Did an AI system generate or substantially rewrite the prose? If yes, do not add it to an English Wikipedia article or draft.
- Is the change limited to spelling, punctuation, capitalization, formatting, redundancy, or sentence splitting in your own writing? If yes, review it manually and keep it local.
- Is this a translation? Follow the separate translation guidance and verify meaning, sources, and neutrality.
- Can you open every cited publication and confirm that it supports the exact wording?
- Have you preserved dates, measurements, attribution, uncertainty, and quotation boundaries?
- Have you disclosed LLM-generated or modified text in the edit summary?
- Do you have a conflict of interest or paid relationship? If so, disclose it and propose the change on the talk page rather than editing directly.
- Are you working on a language edition or project other than English Wikipedia? Check its current local rules instead of importing assumptions.
Common situations and the right response
| Situation | Recommended response |
|---|---|
| A chatbot produced a complete article draft. | Do not paste it into Wikipedia. Use the output, if at all, only to identify questions; locate sources and write the article yourself. |
| You want to rewrite a paragraph to sound more professional. | Write the revision manually from the sources. A broad stylistic rewrite is not basic copyediting. |
| You need to correct a typo in your own sentence. | A localized AI-assisted correction may fit the narrow exception; verify it and disclose the LLM modification in the edit summary. |
| The model supplied a promising citation. | Find and read the actual publication. Use it only if it exists and directly supports the claim. |
| You translated an article with an AI tool. | Check meaning, citations, neutrality, links, and attribution under the translation guidance, then disclose the assistance. |
| You are editing for an employer or client. | Disclose the conflict and paid relationship, and propose changes on the talk page instead of editing the affected article directly. |
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