Wikipedia:WikiProject AI Cleanup

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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.

Open tasks

See § Categories below for all articles that have been tagged as possibly {{AI-generated}}.

Participants

Primary contacts: Chaotıċ Enby (talk · contribs) • 3df (talk) • Queen of Hearts ^talk

Feel free to add yourself here!

3df (talk) 02:59, 4 December 2023 (UTC) - founding member
Chaotıċ Enby (talk · contribs) 03:00, 4 December 2023 (UTC) - founding member
Queen of Hearts ^talk - founding member
ARandomName123 (talk · contribs) 03:02, 4 December 2023 (UTC)
Fermiboson (talk) 03:03, 4 December 2023 (UTC)
Kline • talk to me! • contribs 03:04, 4 December 2023 (UTC)
sawyer / talk 03:04, 4 December 2023 (UTC)
LilianaUwU ^{(talk / contributions)} 03:15, 4 December 2023 (UTC)
Ca ^{talk to me!} 03:45, 4 December 2023 (UTC)
Neonorange (talk to Phil) (he, they) 09:02, 4 December 2023 (UTC)
Jondvdsn1 (talk) 11:40, 4 December 2023 (UTC)
Chlod (say hi!) 16:59, 4 December 2023 (UTC)
TheBritinator (talk) 17:03, 4 December 2023 (UTC)
Generalissima (talk) 17:55, 4 December 2023 (UTC)
Anemonemma (talk) 18:39, 4 December 2023 (UTC)
Vermont (🐿️—🏳️‍🌈) 00:30, 5 December 2023 (UTC)
Est. 2021 (talk · contribs) 11:19, 5 December 2023 (UTC)
Alalch E. 23:56, 5 December 2023 (UTC)
🌙Eclipse ^(talk) ^(contribs) 18:05, 6 December 2023 (UTC)
jp×g 🗯️ 01:29, 7 December 2023 (UTC)
Fuzheado | Talk 11:37, 8 December 2023 (UTC)
Aurodea108 (talk) 05:04, 13 December 2023 (UTC)
Cremastra (talk) 22:11, 14 December 2023 (UTC)
DrowssapSMM 23:40, 19 December 2023 (UTC)
EspWikiped (talk) 15:34, 20 December 2023 (UTC)
Logie1 (talk) 01:58, 23 December 2023 (UTC)
skarz (talk) 19:57, 24 December 2023 (UTC)
DoubleGrazing (talk) 12:31, 15 January 2024 (UTC)
Remsense诉 03:13, 8 February 2024 (UTC)
Geardona (talk to me?) 23:59, 12 February 2024 (UTC)
Elsa_Versailles (talk) 22:11, 23 February 2024 (UTC)
Davidvacca 13:24, 24 February 2024 (UTC)
Adleid (talk) 08:10, 12 March 2024 (UTC)
Ljleppan (talk) 08:12, 12 March 2024 (UTC)
Yamantakks (talk) 03:26, 19 March 2024 (UTC)
GraziePrego (talk) 05:53, 3 April 2024 (UTC)
neonmoon227(talk)10:27, 28 April 2024 (UTC)
Florificapis (talk) 15:00, 24 May 2024 (UTC)
CaroleHenson (talk) 04:23, 26 May 2024 (UTC)
Awhellnawr123214 (talk) 23:29, 26 May 2024 (UTC)
The Wordsmith^{Talk to me} 23:31, 29 May 2024 (UTC)
Acebulf ^{(talk | contribs)} 01:33, 17 June 2024 (UTC)
CycoMa2
Epsilon02 ([[User talk:|talk]]) 00:59, 23 July 2024 (UTC)
Rxp392 18 Aug 2024 (EST)
SecretSpectre (talk) 07:30, 30 August 2024 (UTC)
BangladeshiEditorInSylhet (talk)
Miniapolis 21:10, 26 September 2024 (UTC)
Dan Leonard • talk • contribs 20:17, 27 September 2024 (UTC)
rsjaffe 🗣️ 15:47, 2 October 2024 (UTC)
Ravinesgal (talk) 13:48, 9 October 2024 (UTC)
DJ Cane _(he/him) (Talk) 14:26, 9 October 2024 (UTC)
GreatBritant (talk) 14:30, 9 October 2024 (UTC)
Logical Luna (talk) 14:34, 9 October 2024 (UTC)
GordonGlottal (talk) 14:57, 9 October 2024 (UTC)
Spinixster (trout me!) 15:17, 9 October 2024 (UTC)
Ebishirl (talk) 16:00, 9 October 2024 (UTC)
Corundum Conundrum (CC) 20:11, 9 October 2024 (UTC)
ElectronicsForDogs (talk) 23:13, 9 October 2024 (UTC)
OsFish (talk) 05:36, 10 October 2024 (UTC)
Wil540 art (talk) 09:37, 10 October 2024 (UTC)
W0nderhat (talk) 11:19, 10 October 2024 (UTC)
Matt Heard (talk) 11:46, 10 October 2024 (UTC)
Jambutheplant (talk) 12:21, 10 October 2024 (UTC)
Cmrc23 ʕ•ᴥ•ʔ 18:38, 10 October 2024 (UTC)
Tantomile (talk) 22:19, 10 October 2024 (UTC)
Sir MemeGod  23:02, 10 October 2024 (UTC)
Lunaroxas (talk) 06:30, 11 October 2024 (UTC)
Yaris678 (talk) 14:20, 11 October 2024 (UTC)
Northern-Virginia-Photographer (talk) 15:10, 11 October 2024 (UTC)
Boredintheevening (talk) 19:33, 11 October (UTC)
Q ^{T C} 20:02, 11 October 2024 (UTC)
Svampesky (talk) 17:30, 12 October 2024 (UTC)
Lalalalala7 (talk) 02:50, 13 October 2024 (UTC)
Delabrede (talk) 18:55, 13 October 2024 (UTC)

Resources

Essays

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
Academic sources regarding synthetic content

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

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. Use {{Uw-generic4}} for a final warning.

v t e Citation and verifiability article maintenance templates
Sourcing	{{Circular}} {{Dubious}} {{Excessive citations}} {{Further reading cleanup}} {{More citations needed}} {{More citations needed section}} {{More footnotes needed}} {{No footnotes}} {{No significant coverage}} {{One source}} {{One source section}} {{Only primary sources}} {{NRIS only}} {{Primary sources}} {{Primary sources section}} {{Religious text primary}} {{Self-published}} {{Self-reference cleanup}} {{Self-sourcing examples}} {{Refexample section}} {{Sources exist}} {{Text-source}} {{Third-party}} {{Unreferenced}} {{Unreferenced section}} {{Unreferenced category}} {{Unreliable sources}} {{Unreliable sources section}} {{User-generated}}
BLP-specific	{{BLP unreferenced}} {{BLP unreferenced section}} {{BLP primary sources}} {{BLP self-published}} {{BLP sources}} {{BLP sources section}} {{BLP IMDb-only refimprove}} {{BLP IMDb refimprove}} {{BLP no footnotes}} {{BLP more footnotes needed}} {{BLP one source}}
Topic specific	{{Localist}} {{Media IMDb refimprove}} {{More medical citations needed}} {{More science citations needed}} {{Neologism}} {{Science review}} {{Unreferenced law}} {{Unreferenced-law section}} {{Unreferenced medical section}}
Dispute-related	{{Cite check}} {{Cite check section}} {{Content}} {{Disputed}} {{Dispute about}} {{Disputed section}} {{Disputed chem}} {{Disputed list}} {{Disputed map}} {{Expert needed}} {{Hoax}} {{Original research}} {{Original research section}} {{Speculation}} {{Speculation section}} {{Synthesis}} {{Verifiability}} {{Verify sources}}
Citation improvements	{{Citation style}} {{Citations broken}} {{Cleanup bare URLs}} {{Format footnotes}} {{Full citations needed}} {{Ibid}} {{Page numbers improve}} {{Page numbers needed}} {{Shallow references}}
General advice	Citing sources Reliable sources Maintenance template removal Citation needed Find sources Combining sources Referencing styles

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