For the First Time in History, ChatGPT Has Surpassed Wikipedia in Number of Users
An epochal shift is taking place right before our eyes. According to the latest data, OpenAI's ChatGPT has become the first artificial intelligence tool to surpass the legendary Wikipedia in global user engagement and monthly web traffic. This change represents a fundamental shift in how people around the world search for and consume information online.
Wikipedia in Second Place?
A viral chart based on data from British market research company GWI shows that over the past two years, the percentage of internet users using ChatGPT has surpassed the percentage visiting Wikipedia. This analysis does not include China, but it still represents a significant milestone in digital history. Most remarkable is the speed at which this change took place—less than a year after its launch in late 2022, ChatGPT reportedly surpassed Wikipedia in user engagement. Web analytics from Similarweb support these findings with concrete figures. As of May 2025, ChatGPT ranked sixth globally in website traffic, with more than 4.5 billion monthly visits. This puts it ahead of Wikipedia, which was still averaging about 5.4 billion monthly visits in April 2024 but now ranks tenth globally. However, this shift is not just about numbers—it reflects a fundamental change in how users prefer to access knowledge. Whereas people once turned to carefully curated encyclopedia entries, they are now shifting toward conversational answers from artificial intelligence. As one analyst aptly summarized: "The encyclopedia of the internet has been overshadowed by the conversation of the internet... more people go to ChatGPT for answers than to Wikipedia because ChatGPT answers them back."
Information Quality
However, this transformation raises serious questions about the credibility and reliability of information. Wikipedia is maintained by millions of human editors who strive for accuracy and transparency through citations and verifiable sources. In contrast, generative artificial intelligence such as ChatGPT can be prone to hallucinations—that is, making up facts—and lacks transparent sourcing for its answers. Studies have revealed troubling trends in the accuracy of ChatGPT's responses. More than half of the programming answers provided by ChatGPT contain misinformation or errors—a pattern that is likely present in other areas of knowledge as well. These findings raise fundamental questions about whether the speed and convenience of conversational AI come at the cost of information accuracy and credibility. The ethical considerations surrounding this shift are equally complex. There are concerns about fair use, as large language models such as those powering ChatGPT are trained on vast datasets—including content obtained from sources such as Wikipedia itself—without clear attribution or compensation for the original contributors.
Will Wikipedia Fade into Obscurity?
ChatGPT's rapid rise above Wikipedia signals both technological progress and new challenges relating to information quality, transparency, and digital literacy. As conversational artificial intelligence becomes the first stop for many users with questions both large and small, continued scrutiny will be essential to ensure that accuracy is not sacrificed for convenience or novelty. This change in information-seeking behavior represents a paradigm shift: users increasingly prefer interactive tools capable of providing direct answers over static reference pages. While Wikipedia remains an invaluable source of verified and cited information, ChatGPT offers immediate, personalized responses that can be tailored to a user's specific needs. The future of information retrieval is thus taking shape before our eyes, with the traditional model of encyclopedic knowledge facing a new model of conversational access to information. The key will be to find a balance between innovation and reliability, speed and accuracy, convenience and credibility.
