By Wyatte Grantham-Philips
Remember what you searched for in 2023? Well, Wikipedia has the receipts.
English Wikipedia raked in more than 84 billion views this year, according to numbers released Tuesday by the Wikimedia Foundation, the non-profit behind the free, publicly edited online encyclopedia. And the most popular article was about ChatGPT (yes, the AI chatbot that’s seemingly everywhere today).
Since its launch just over a year ago, OpenAI's ChatGPT has skyrocketed into the public's consciousness as the technology makes its way into schools, health care, law and even religious sermons. The chatbot has also contributed to growing debates about the promise and potential dangers of generative AI, much of which is documented on its Wikipedia page.
The second most-read article on Wikipedia in 2023 was the annual list of deaths, which sees high traffic year after year — taking the #4 and #1 spots in 2022 and 2021, respectively. Individual entries for notable figures who passed away also garnered significant interest this year, including pages for Matthew Perry and Lisa Marie Presley.
Meanwhile, the highly anticipated 2023 Cricket World Cup took third place — alongside three other cricket-related entries in Wikipedia’s top 25 articles this year, including the Indian Premier League at #4, marking the first time cricket content has made the list since the Wikimedia Foundation started tracking in 2015.
“Barbenheimer," Taylor Swift and more also appeared to sway our 2023 internet-reading habits. Here are this year's top 25 articles on English Wikipedia.
1. ChatGPT: 49,490,406 pageviews
2. Deaths in 2023: 42,666,860 pageviews
3. 2023 Cricket World Cup: 38,171,653 pageviews
4. Indian Premier League: 32,012,810 pageviews
5. Oppenheimer (film): 28,348,248 pageviews
6. Cricket World Cup: 25,961,417 pageviews
7. J. Robert Oppenheimer: 25,672,469 pageviews
8. Jawan (film): 21,791,126 pageviews
9. 2023 Indian Premier League: 20,694,974 pageviews
10. Pathaan (film): 19,932,509 pageviews
11. The Last of Us (TV series): 19,791,789 pageviews
12. Taylor Swift, 19,418,385: pageviews
13. Barbie (film): 18,051,077 pageviews
14. Cristiano Ronaldo: 17,492,537 pageviews
15. Lionel Messi: 16,623,630 pageviews
16. Premier League: 16,604,669 pageviews
17. Matthew Perry: 16,454,666 pageviews
18. United States: 16,240,461 pageviews
19. Elon Musk: 14,370,395 pageviews
20. Avatar: The Way of Water: 14,303,116 pageviews
21. India: 13,850,178 pageviews
22. Lisa Marie Presley: 13,764,007 pageviews
23. Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3: 13,392,917 pageviews
24. Russian invasion of Ukraine: 12,798,866 pageviews
25. Andrew Tate: 12,728,616 pageviews
According to the Wikimedia Foundation, this top 25 list was created using English Wikipedia data as of Nov. 28. Numbers for the full year are set to be updated by the nonprofit on Jan. 3, 2024.
The top countries that accessed English Wikipedia overall to date in 2023 are the United States (33.2 billion) and the United Kingdom (9 billion) — followed by India (8.48 billion), Canada (3.95 billion) and Australia (2.56 billion), according to Wikimedia Foundation data shared with The Associated Press.
