The European Commission "has opened a public call for evidence on European open digital ecosystems," writes Help Net Security, part of preparations for an upcoming Communication "that will examine the role of open source in EU's digital infrastructure." The consultation runs from January 6 to February 3, 2026. Submissions will be used to shape a Commission Communication addressed to the European Parliament, the Council, and other EU bodies, which is scheduled for publication in the first quarter of 2026... The call for evidence links Europe's reliance on digital technologies developed outside the EU to concerns over long term control of infrastructure and software supply chains... Open digital ecosystems are discussed in the context of technological sovereignty and the use of technologies that can be inspected, adapted, and shared.
Long-time Slashdot reader Elektroschock describes it as the European Commission "stepping up its efforts behind open-source software" Building on President von der Leyen's political guidelines, the initiative will review the Commission's 2020-2023 open-source approach and set out concrete actions to strengthen Europe's open-source ecosystem across key areas such as cloud, AI, cybersecurity and industrial technologies. The strategy will be presented alongside the upcoming Cloud and AI Development Act, forming a broader policy package aimed at reducing strategic dependencies and boosting Europe's digital resilience.
And "In just a few days, over 370 submissions have already been filed, indicating that the issue is touching a nerve across the EU," writes CyberNews.com: "Europe must regain control over its software supply chain to safeguard freedom, security, and innovation," suggests an individual from Slovakia. Similar perspectives appear to be widely shared among respondents...

The document doesn't mention US tech giants specifically, but rather aims to support tech sovereignty and seek "digital solutions that are valid alternatives to proprietary ones...."

"This is not a legislative initiative. The strategy will take the form of a Commission communication. The initiative will set out a general approach and will propose: actions relying on further commitments and an implementation process," the EC explains. Policymakers expect the strategy to help EU member states identify the necessary steps to support national open-source companies and communities.

This week Google "unveiled a set of tools for retailers that helps them roll out AI agents," reports the Wall Street Journal, The new retail AI agents, which help shoppers find their desired items, provide customer support and let people order food at restaurants, are part of what Alphabet-owned Google calls Gemini Enterprise for Customer Experience. Major retailers, including home improvement giant Lowe's, the grocer Kroger and pizza chain Papa Johns say they are already using Google's tools to help prepare for the incoming wave of AI-assisted shopping and ordering...

Kicking off the race among tech giants to get ahead of this shift, OpenAI released its Instant Checkout feature last fall, which lets users buy stuff directly through its chatbot ChatGPT. In January, Microsoft announced a similar checkout feature for its Copilot chatbot. Soon after OpenAI's release last year, Walmart said it would partner with OpenAI to let shoppers buy its products within ChatGPT.
But that's just the beginning, reports the New York Times, with hundreds of start-ups also vying for the attention of retailers: There are A.I. start-ups that offer in-store cameras that can detect a customer's age or gender, robots that manage shelves on their own and headsets that give store workers access to product information in real time... The scramble to exploit artificial intelligence is happening across the retail spectrum, from the highest echelons of luxury goods to the most pragmatic of convenience stores.

7-Eleven said it was using conversational A.I. to hire staff at its convenience stores through an agent named Rita (Recruiting Individuals Through Automation). Executives said that they no longer had to worry about whether applicants would show up to interviews and that the system had reduced hiring time, which had taken two weeks, to less than three days.
The article notes that at the National Retail Federation conference, other companies showing their AI advancements included Applebee's, IHOP, the Vitamin Shoppe, Urban Outfitters, Rag & Bone, Kendra Scott, Michael Kors and Philip Morris.

At the AI safety site Foom, science journalist Mordechai Rorvig explores a paper presented at November's Empirical Methods in Natural Language Processing conference: [R]esearchers at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (EPFL), the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), and Georgia Tech revisited earlier findings that showed that language models, the engines of commercial AI chatbots, show strong signal correlations with the human language network, the region of the brain responsible for processing language... The results lend clarity to the surprising picture that has been emerging from the last decade of neuroscience research: That AI programs can show strong resemblances to large-scale brain regions — performing similar functions, and doing so using highly similar signal patterns.

Such resemblances have been exploited by neuroscientists to make much better models of cortical regions. Perhaps more importantly, the links between AI and cortex provide an interpretation of commercial AI technology as being profoundly brain-like, validating both its capabilities as well as the risks it might pose for society as the first synthetic braintech. "It is something we, as a community, need to think about a lot more," said Badr AlKhamissi, doctoral student in computer science at EPFL and first author of the preprint, in an interview with Foom. "These models are getting better and better every day. And their similarity to the brain [or brain regions] is also getting better — probably. We're not 100% sure about it...."

There are many known limitations with seeing AI programs as models of brain regions, even those that have high signal correlations. For example, such models lack any direct implementations of biochemical signalling, which is known to be important for the functioning of nervous systems. However, if such comparisons are valid, then they would suggest, somewhat dramatically, that we are increasingly surrounded by a synthetic braintech. A technology not just as capable as the human brain, in some ways, but actually made up of similar components.
Thanks to Slashdot reader Gazelle Bay for sharing the article.

As 2026 begins, MIT Technology Review publishes "educated guesses" on emerging technologies that will define the future, advances "we think will drive progress or incite the most change — for better or worse — in the years ahead."

This year's list includes next-gen nuclear, gene-editing drugs (as well as the "resurrection" of ancient genes from extinct creatures), and three AI-related developments: AI companions, AI coding tools, and "mechanistic interpretability" for revealing LLM decision-making.

But also on the list is sodium-ion batteries, "a cheaper, safer alternative to lithium." Backed by major players and public investment, they're poised to power grids and affordable EVs worldwide. [Chinese battery giant CATL claims to have already started manufacturing sodium-ion batteries at scale, and BYD also plans a massive production facility for sodium-ion batteries.] The most significant impact of sodium-Âion technology may be not on our roads but on our power grids. Storing clean energy generated by solar and wind has long been a challenge. Sodium-ion batteries, with their low cost, enhanced thermal stability, and long cycle life, are an attractive alternative. Peak Energy, a startup in the US, is already deploying grid-scale sodium-ion energy storage. Sodium-ion cells' energy density is still lower than that of high-end lithium-ion ones, but it continues to improve each year — and it's already sufficient for small passenger cars and logistics vehicles.
And another "breakthrough technology" on their list is commercial space stations: Vast Space from California, plans to launch its Haven-1 space station in May 2026 on a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket. If all goes to plan, it will initially support crews of four people staying aboard the bus-size habitat for 10 days. Paying customers will be able to experience life in microgravity and conduct research such as growing plants and testing drugs. On its heels will be Axiom Space's outpost, the Axiom Station, consisting of five modules (or rooms). It's designed to look like a boutique hotel and is expected to launch in 2028. Voyager Space aims to launch its version, called Starlab, the same year, and Blue Origin's Orbital Reef space station plans to follow in 2030.
Thanks to long-time Slashdot reader sandbagger for sharing the article.

A couple months ago, YouTuber Benn Jordan "found vulnerabilities in some of Flock's license plate reader cameras," reports 404 Media's Jason Koebler. "He reached out to me to tell me he had learned that some of Flock's Condor cameras were left live-streaming to the open internet."

This led to a remarkable article where Koebler confirmed the breach by visiting a Flock surveillance camera mounted on a California traffic signal. ("On my phone, I am watching myself in real time as the camera records and livestreams me — without any password or login — to the open internet... Hundreds of miles away, my colleagues are remotely watching me too through the exposed feed.") Flock left livestreams and administrator control panels for at least 60 of its AI-enabled Condor cameras around the country exposed to the open internet, where anyone could watch them, download 30 days worth of video archive, and change settings, see log files, and run diagnostics. Unlike many of Flock's cameras, which are designed to capture license plates as people drive by, Flock's Condor cameras are pan-tilt-zoom (PTZ) cameras designed to record and track people, not vehicles. Condor cameras can be set to automatically zoom in on people's faces... The exposure was initially discovered by YouTuber and technologist Benn Jordan and was shared with security researcher Jon "GainSec" Gaines, who recently found numerous vulnerabilities in several other models of Flock's automated license plate reader (ALPR) cameras.
Jordan appeared this week as a guest on Koebler's own YouTube channel, while Jordan released a video of his own about the experience. titled "We Hacked Flock Safety Cameras in under 30 Seconds." (Thanks to Slashdot reader beadon for sharing the link.) But together Jordan and 404 Media also created another video three weeks ago titled "The Flock Camera Leak is Like Netflix for Stalkers" which includes footage he says was "completely accessible at the time Flock Safety was telling cities that the devices are secure after they're deployed."

The video decries cities "too lazy to conduct their own security audit or research the efficacy versus risk," but also calls weak security "an industry-wide problem." Jordan explains in the video how he "very easily found the administration interfaces for dozens of Flock safety cameras..." — but also what happened next: None of the data or video footage was encrypted. There was no username or password required. These were all completely public-facing, for the world to see.... Making any modification to the cameras is illegal, so I didn't do this. But I had the ability to delete any of the video footage or evidence by simply pressing a button. I could see the paths where all of the evidence files were located on the file system...

During and after the process of conducting that research and making that video, I was visited by the police and had what I believed to be private investigators outside my home photographing me and my property and bothering my neighbors. John Gaines or GainSec, the brains behind most of this research, lost employment within 48 hours of the video being released. And the sad reality is that I don't view these things as consequences or punishment for researching security vulnerabilities. I view these as consequences and punishment for doing it ethically and transparently.

I've been contacted by people on or communicating with civic councils who found my videos concerning, and they shared Flock Safety's response with me. The company claimed that the devices in my video did not reflect the security standards of the ones being publicly deployed. The CEO even posted on LinkedIn and boasted about Flock Safety's security policies. So, I formally and publicly offered to personally fund security research into Flock Safety's deployed ecosystem. But the law prevents me from touching their live devices. So, all I needed was their permission so I wouldn't get arrested. And I was even willing to let them supervise this research.

I got no response.
So instead, he read Flock's official response to a security/surveillance industry research group — while standing in front of one of their security cameras, streaming his reading to the public internet.

"Might as well. It's my tax dollars that paid for it."

" 'Flock is committed to continuously improving security...'"

A federal judge has temporarily lifted the Trump administration's suspension of the Coastal Virginia Offshore Wind, allowing construction on the largest offshore wind project in the U.S. to resume. CNBC reports: Judge Jamar Walker of the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia granted Dominion's request for a preliminary injunction Friday. Dominion called the Trump suspension "arbitrary and illegal" in its lawsuit. "Our team will now focus on safely restarting work to ensure CVOW begins delivery of critical energy in just weeks," a Dominion spokesperson told CNBC in a statement Friday. "While our legal challenge proceeds, we will continue seeking a durable resolution of this matter through cooperation with the federal government," the spokesperson said.

Dominion said in December that "stopping CVOW for any length of time will threaten grid reliability for some of the nation's most important war fighting, AI and civilian assets." Coastal Virginia Offshore Wind is a 176-turbine project that would provide enough power for more than 600,000 homes, according to Dominion. It is scheduled to start dispatching power by the end of the first quarter of 2026. In December, the Trump administration paused the leases on all five offshore wind sites currently under construction in the U.S., blaming the decisions on a classified report from the Department of Defense.

The Trump administration urged the largest electricity grid in the U.S. to make big tech companies pay for new power plants to support the surging electricity demand from AI and data centers. CNBC reports: Electricity prices have exploded in recent years on PJM Interconnection due in part to the data centers that tech companies are building to train and power artificial intelligence. The PJM grid serves more than 65 million people across 13 states and Washington, D.C. Its service area includes northern Virginia, the largest data center market in the world.

The Trump administration and several states signed a pact that calls for tech companies to pay for new power plants built in PJM. Leading tech companies have agreed to fund $15 billion of new generation for the grid, according to an administration statement. The Trump administration and the states urged PJM to hold an emergency capacity auction to procure this power, according to the Department of Energy. PJM should also cap the amount that existing power plants can charge in the grid's capacity market to protect ratepayers, according to the administration. "We have to get out from underneath this bureaucratic system that we have in the regional grid operators and we've got to allow markets to work," said Interior Secretary Doug Burgum at the White House. "One of the ways markets can work is to have the hyperscalers actually rapidly building power."

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: On Thursday, Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC) reported record fourth-quarter earnings and said it expects AI chip demand to continue for years. During an earnings call, CEO C.C. Wei told investors that while he cannot predict the semiconductor industry's long-term trajectory, he remains bullish on AI. "All in all, I believe in my point of view, the AI is real -- not only real, it's starting to grow into our daily life. And we believe that is kind of -- we call it AI megatrend, we certainly would believe that," Wei said during the call. "So another question is 'can the semiconductor industry be good for three, four, five years in a row?' I'll tell you the truth, I don't know. But I look at the AI, it looks like it's going to be like an endless -- I mean, that for many years to come."

TSMC posted net income of NT$505.7 billion (about $16 billion) for the quarter, up 35 percent year over year and above analyst expectations. Revenue hit $33.7 billion, a 25.5 percent increase from the same period last year. The company expects nearly 30 percent revenue growth in 2026 and plans to spend between $52 billion and $56 billion on capital expenditures this year, up from $40.9 billion in 2025.

An anonymous reader shares a report: A hit song has been excluded from Sweden's official chart after it emerged the "artist" behind it was an AI creation. I Know, You're Not Mine -- or Jag Vet, Du Ar Inte Min in Swedish -- by a singer called Jacub has been a streaming success in Sweden, topping the Spotify rankings.

However, the Swedish music trade body has excluded the song from the official chart after learning it was AI-generated. "Jacub's track has been excluded from Sweden's official chart, Sverigetopplistan, which is compiled by IFPI Sweden. While the song appears on Spotify's own charts, it does not qualify for inclusion on the official chart under the current rules," said an IFPI Sweden spokesperson. Ludvig Werber, IFPI Sweden's chief executive, said: "Our rule is that if it is a song that is mainly AI-generated, it does not have the right to be on the top list."

Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff said this week that his company's software engineering headcount has remained "mostly flat" over the past year as internal AI tools have delivered substantial productivity gains.

Speaking on TBPN, Benioff said he has about 15,000 engineers who are "more productive than ever." The company has redirected its hiring efforts toward sales and customer engagement roles, hiring 20% more account executives this year as it pushes its Agentforce agentic AI service.

Human salespeople remain essential for explaining the "intricacies and nuances" of agentic AI to skeptical enterprise customers, he argued. Other parts of the business have seen deeper cuts. In a separate appearance on The Logan Bartlett Show, Benioff said that Salesforce had reduced its customer support workforce by roughly 50%.

AI still can't produce code as well as most junior programmers he's worked with, David Heinemeier Hansson, the creator of Ruby on Rails and co-founder of 37 Signals, said on a recent podcast [video link], which is why he continues to write most of his code by hand. Hansson compared AI's current coding capabilities to "a flickering light bulb" -- total darkness punctuated by moments of clarity before going pitch black again.

At his company, humans wrote 95% of the code for Fizzy, 37 Signals' Kanban-inspired organization product, he said. The team experimented with AI-powered features, but those ended up on the cutting room floor. "I'm not feeling that we're falling behind at 37 Signals in terms of our ability to produce, in terms of our ability to launch things or improve the products," Hansson said.

Hansson said he remains skeptical of claims that businesses can fire half their programmers and still move faster. Despite his measured skepticism, Hansson said he marvels at the scale of bets the U.S. economy is placing on AI reaching AGI. "The entire American economy right now is one big bet that that's going to happen," he said.

Tom's Hardware: Extensive research into the pricing of some of the best hard drives on the market for large capacity, economical storage indicates that prices are beginning to increase sharply, with some of the most popular models on the market seeing increases upwards of 60%. According to research from ComputerBase, pricing analysis on 12 of the most popular mainstream drives on the market indicates an average price increase of 46% over the last 4 months.

While the research and price checks on these drives track movement based on European prices (ComputerBase is a German outlet), Tom's Hardware checks on similar or identical SKUs in the U.S. indicate that the trends are indeed replicated, or perhaps worse, on the other side of the pond. CB reports that various drives like Seagate's IronWolf NAS line, Toshiba's Cloud Scale Capacity Drives, Western Digital's WD Red, and Seagate's BarraCuda lines are all showing price increases of between 23% and 66%. As noted, the average price increases clock in at 46% since September 2025.

theodp writes: Code.org, the nonprofit backed by AI giants Microsoft, Google and Amazon and whose Hour of AI and free AI curriculum aim to make world's K-12 schoolchildren AI literate, points job seekers to its AI Use Policy in Hiring, which promises dire consequences for those who use AI during interviews or take home assignments without its OK.

Explaining "What's Not Okay," Code.org writes: "While we support thoughtful use of AI, certain uses undermine fairness and honesty in the hiring process. We ask that candidates do not [...] use AI during interviews and take-home assignments without explicit consent from the interview team. Such use goes against our values of integrity and transparency and will result in disqualification from the hiring process."

Interestingly, Code.org CEO Partovi last year faced some blowback from educators over his LinkedIn post that painted schools that police AI use by students as dinosaurs. Partovi wrote, "Schools of the past define AI use as 'cheating.' Schools of the future define AI skills as the new literacy. Every desk-job employer is looking to hire workers who are adept at AI. Employers want the students who are best at this new form of 'cheating.'"

Reports suggest ASUS has effectively ended production of NVIDIA's RTX 5070 Ti and 5060 Ti 16GB GPUs due to a severe memory crunch driven by AI infrastructure demand, even as NVIDIA insists it's still shipping all GeForce SKUs. YouTube channel Hardware Unboxed broke the news in its most recent video where it states ASUS "explicitly" told them the RTX 5070 Ti is "currently facing a supply shortage" and has "placed the model into end of life status." The shift leaves PC gamers facing fewer high-VRAM options just as modern games increasingly demand more than 8GB. Engadget reports: Hardware Unboxed also spoke to retailers in Australia, who told the channel the 5070 Ti is "no longer available to purchase from partners and distributors," adding they expect that to be the case throughout at least the first quarter of the year. The 5060 Ti 16GB "is almost done as well," with ASUS stating it no longer plans to produce that model going forward either. Both GPUs are 16GB models, making them more expensive to produce in the current economic climate. And while there might be some hope of the 5070 Ti and 5060 Ti 16GB returning later this year, the channel suggests both are unlikely to make a comeback. NVIDIA will reportedly focus on 8GB models like the RTX 5050, 5060, and 5060 Ti 8GB, with the 12GB 5070 set to stick around for now. The 5080 and 5090 are seemingly safe as well, as more expensive, higher margin models, they offer more space for manufacturers to absorb component price increases.

"Demand for GeForce RTX GPUs is strong, and memory supply is constrained. We continue to ship all GeForce SKUs and are working closely with our suppliers to maximize memory availability," a NVIDIA spokesperson told Engadget. The company did not say 5070 Ti and 5060 Ti 16GB are going out of production. However, it also didn't confirm they're sticking around either. ASUS did not immediately respond to Engadget's comment request.

The powerful data privacy watchdog in Italy long known for aggressively policing U.S. and Chinese AI giants is under investigation for possible corruption and embezzlement. Reuters reports: Rome prosecutors are investigating the agency's president, Pasquale Stanzione, and three other board members over alleged excessive spending and possible corruption behind its decisions, Italian news agencies including ANSA as well as the judicial source, who did not wish to be named, said. Stanzione, when asked by reporters to comment on the investigation, said he was "absolutely serene."

The opposition 5-Star Movement said the agency's credibility had been undermined and called for Stanzione to resign. Stanzione declined to answer when asked repeatedly by reporters whether he would step down. The data privacy authority, known in Italy as the Garante, is one of the European Union's most proactive regulators in assessing AI platform compliance with the bloc's data privacy regime. It frequently takes initiatives -- such as requesting information or imposing fines or bans -- on matters affecting high-tech multinationals operating in the country.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Bloomberg: Oracle is trying -- and sometimes struggling -- to attract workers to Nashville, where it is developing a massive riverfront headquarters. The company is hiring for more roles in Nashville than any other US city, with a special focus on jobs in its crucial cloud infrastructure unit. Oracle cloud workers based elsewhere say they've been offered tens of thousands of dollars in incentives to move. Chairman Larry Ellison made a splash in April 2024 when he said Oracle would make Nashville its "world headquarters" just a few years after moving the software company from Redwood City, California, to Austin. His proclamation followed a 2021 tax incentive deal in which Oracle pledged to create 8,500 jobs in Nashville by 2031, paying an average salary above six figures.

"We're creating a world leading cloud and AI hub in Nashville that is attracting top talent locally, regionally, and from across the country," Oracle Senior Vice President Scott Twaddle said in a statement. "We've seen great success recruiting engineering and technical positions locally and will continue to hire aggressively for the next several years." Still, Oracle has a long way to go in its hiring goals. Today, it has about 800 workers assigned to offices in Nashville, according to documents seen by Bloomberg. That trails far behind the number of company employees in locations including Redwood City, Austin and Kansas City, the center of health records company Cerner, which Oracle acquired in 2022.

A lack of state income tax and the city's thriving music scene are touted by Oracle's promotional materials to attract talent to Nashville. Some new hires note they moved because in a tough tech job market, the Tennessee city was the only place with an Oracle position offered. To fit all of these workers, Oracle is planning a massive campus along the Cumberland River. It will feature over 2 million square feet of office space, a new cross-river bridge and a branch of the ultra high-end sushi chain Nobu, which has locations on many properties connected to Ellison, including the Hawaiian island of Lanai. [...] Oracle has been running recruitment events for the new hub. But a common concern for employees weighing a move is that Nashville is classified by Oracle in a lower geographic pay band than California or Seattle, meaning that future salary growth is likely limited, according to multiple workers who asked not to be identified discussing private information.

A weaker local tech job market also gives pause to some considering relocation. In addition, many of the roles in Nashville require five days a week in the office, which is a shift for Oracle, where a significant number of roles are remote. For a global company like Oracle, the exact meaning of "headquarters" can be a bit unclear. Austin remains the address included on company SEC filings and its executives are scattered across the country. The city where Oracle is hiring for the most positions globally is Bengaluru, the southern Indian tech hub. Still, Oracle is positioning Nashville to be at the center of its future. "We're developing our Nashville location to stand alongside Austin, Redwood Shores, and Seattle as a major innovation hub," Oracle writes on its recruitment site. "This is your chance to be part of it."

An anonymous reader shares a report: Raspberry Pi is launching a new add-on board capable of running generative AI models locally on the Raspberry Pi 5. Announced on Thursday, the $130 AI HAT+ 2 is an upgraded -- and more expensive -- version of the module launched last year, now offering 8GB of RAM and a Hailo 10H chip with 40 TOPS of AI performance.

Once connected, the Raspberry Pi 5 will use the AI HAT+ 2 to handle AI-related workloads while leaving the main board's Arm CPU available to complete other tasks. Unlike the previous AI HAT+, which is focused on image-based AI processing, the AI HAT+ 2 comes with onboard RAM and can run small gen AI models like Llama 3.2 and DeepSeek-R1-Distill, along with a series of Qwen models. You can train and fine-tune AI models using the device as well.

An anonymous reader shares a report: Microsoft's library of books is so heavy that it once caused a campus building to sink, according to an unproven legend among employees. Now those physical books, journals, and reports, and many of Microsoft's digital subscriptions to leading US newspapers, are disappearing in a shift described inside Microsoft as an "AI-powered learning experience."

Microsoft started cutting back on its employee subscriptions to news and reports services in November, with some publishers receiving an automated email cancellation of a contract. [...] Strategic News Service (SNS), which has provided global reports to Microsoft's roughly 220,000 employees and executives for more than 20 years, is no longer part of Microsoft's subscription list.

Apple, which spent years as TSMC's undisputed top customer and helped the Taiwanese foundry become the semiconductor industry's most important manufacturer, is now fighting for production capacity as Nvidia's AI chip orders consume an ever-larger share of the company's leading-edge wafer supply.

TSMC CEO CC Wei visited Cupertino last August to deliver unwelcome news: Apple would face the largest price increase in years and the iPhone maker would no longer have guaranteed access to production capacity across TSMC's nearly two dozen fabs.

According to Culpium analysis and its supply chain sources, Nvidia likely overtook Apple as TSMC's largest customer in at least one or two quarters of 2025. TSMC's revenue climbed 36% last year to $122 billion, the company reported Thursday.

Wikipedia turns 25 today, and the online encyclopedia is celebrating that with an announcement that it has signed new licensing deals with a slate of major AI companies -- Amazon, Microsoft, Meta Platforms, Perplexity and Mistral AI. The deals allow these companies to access Wikipedia content "at a volume and speed designed specifically for their needs." The Wikimedia Foundation did not disclose financial terms.

Google had already signed on as one of the first enterprise customers back in 2022. The agreements follow the Wikimedia Foundation's push last year for AI developers to pay for access through its enterprise platform. The foundation said human traffic had fallen 8% while bot visits -- sometimes disguised to evade detection -- were heavily taxing its servers.

Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales said he welcomes AI training on the site's human-curated content but that companies "should probably chip in and pay for your fair share of the cost that you're putting on us." The site remains the ninth most visited on the internet, hosting more than 65 million articles in 300 languages maintained by some 250,000 volunteer editors.