Wikipedia: here are the most searched words in 2023

Posted On: February 15, 2024

GPT paint, Matthew Perry, Barbie: with more than 84 billion searches made on Wikipedia this year, the website on Wednesday offered an open window into public interest on a planetary scale. Here are 25 topics that will attract the most attention in 2023.

In 2023, it would not be surprising if the artificial intelligence language model “ChatGPT” attracted the most clicks on Wikipedia in 2023, with more than 49.5 million pages read, according to what CNN reported Wednesday.

“It's clear that people want to better understand the history and context behind ChatGPT technology as they experiment with it,” said Anusha Alikhan, director of communications at the Wikimedia Foundation, in an interview with American media.

The “Deaths in 2023” page took second place, with more than 42.7 million hits, according to data from the Wikipedia foundation.

But what is special about this census is the huge impact of the population in India and Southeast Asia which greatly influences the final results, with population growth expected to reach 1.43 billion by the end of this year, according to UN data.

Therefore, a fifth of the searches on the list relate to this region this year, specifically the Indian cricket league “Indian Premier League” which was searched more than 32 million times, as well as the Indian films “Jawan” and “Pathaan”, with more than 21 million and over 19 million pages read.

Cinematographic events, such as the release of the films Oppenheimer (28.3M) and Barbie (18M), or the death of actor Matthew Perry (16M), also marked the year.

Other celebrities, including singer Taylor Swift (19 million), footballer Cristiano Ronaldo (17 million) and multi-billionaire Elon Musk (14 million), also caught the public's attention, while Russia's invasion of Ukraine attracted 12 million searches.