← the record
WF-R24QSX

Machine-translated junk articles flood Greenlandic Wikipedia, harming language

Kenneth Wehr, who manages the Greenlandic-language Wikipedia, found that virtually all articles had been created by non-speakers using machine translators, resulting in error-filled pages. He deleted almost everything. The problem extends to other vulnerable languages, creating a cycle where AI models train on poor translations and produce worse output.

Date it happened
2021-01-01
Organisation involved
Wikimedia Foundation
Product, system or model
Wikipedia
Where this came from
Share this incident
XLinkedInFacebookWhatsAppEmail
Attribution

This incident was imported from technologyreview.com. Our additions to it — the structured fields, the translation, the checks against other reports — are published under the same licence.

This is a record of what was reported, not a finding that anyone broke the law. If it names your organisation and you believe it is wrong, the corrections process is free and open to everyone.