A prototype is available, though it’s Chrome-only and English-only at the moment. How this’ll work is you select some text and then click on the extension, which will try to “return the relevant quote and inference for the user, along with links to article and quality signals”.
How this works is it uses ChatGPT to generate a search query, utilizes WP’s search API to search for relevant article text, and then uses ChatGPT to extract the relevant part.
Obviously Wikipedia is not a definitive or 100% accurate source but this sounds like a genuinely positive use of AI to combat misinformation. The people it really needs to reach likely won’t use it but it’s still a good idea.
Off topic, but has anyone noticed Wikipedia’s starting to feel outdated in places? Way too often there’s something that’s “as of 2014”.
There’s stuff from before 1990. You can help fix it.
Can you? I was under the impression it’s gotten harder and harder to get things approved.
Edit: Huh, I guess that’s just whole new articles.
Chrome extension only?
For now. Like I said, they’re gauging interest in it for now, and it’s currently basically a prototype. So kinda ironically, to support free knowledge, we’ve gotta inconvene (the proper verb is apparently “inconvenience”? sorry that’s just too weird) and grovel to Google a bit. Someone can probably write a bs marketing passage about Google’s auspices to supplant free knowledge through providing accessibility to a supernation of usuremongers.
Firefox conversion by-hand doesn’t seem like it’ll be that hard either, thanks to Manifest v3, which removed the stupid deviation from the standard of Chrome using callbacks instead of promises like everyone else does.
These work perfectly on any chromium browser like Brave fyi.
They’re a non-profit and they’re aiming for the largest possible market segment.
