Do LLMs dream of Electric Toasters?
They've seen prompts you people wouldn't believe
Gang, we apologize for the long delay between Wikify installments. However, in our defense… it was summer break, and (contrary to speculation) we do in fact have lives outside of Wikipedia research and Wookieepedia administration. To make it up to you, we've put together what many are calling the greatest issue of Wikify yet.
We kick things off with a full newsroom investigation into Wikipedia's infamous electric toaster hoax, which (spoiler alert) continues to cause confusion among AI language models years after it was corrected. One chatbot, in particular, is still getting tripped up on this—and it might surprise you which one it is.
Next, we address a frequently asked question from potential clients and current fanboys: Why can't you just have someone else post your Wikipedia draft? Then we conclude things with a brief recap of Wiki news, including the debut of a new Wikipedia trivia game.
You go ahead and keep reading; we're going to hang out by the pool until our tan lines even out.
Wikipedia's long tail of misinformation
Two years ago, Lumino co-founder and (more importantly) occasional Wikify contributor Rhiannon Ruff released her seminal book Wikipedia & Crisis Communications, which remains the single best introduction to the online encyclopedia for brand reps, PR pros, and comms workers worldwide.
Loyal readers will recall that the first chapter of that book detailed Wikipedia's infamous toaster hoax. To recap: For more than a decade, the Wikipedia entry for Toaster inaccurately identified the inventor of the technology as one "Alan MacMasters"—who in the real world was an aerospace engineering student at the University of Surrey. MacMasters' classmates inserted him into the toaster article as a joke in 2012.
It was a one-off attempt at humor that had lasting implications! The notion that MacMasters had invented the toaster lingered on Wikipedia for so long—and consequently topped Google search results—that it ended up being cited in over a dozen books and even appeared on a Scottish government website promoting the country's “innovative spirit.”
It wasn't until 2022 that Wikipedia editors finally corrected the misinformation about the toaster invention. But by then the damage was already done. There were already so many websites and books attributing the technology to MacMasters that the Large Language Models behind AI chatbots were destined to be perpetually confused about the issue.
Rhi noted in Wikipedia & Crisis Communications that ChatGPT was still intermittently getting the answer wrong in 2023. You could ask it once and it would give the right response (which is either "Crompton & Company" or "Albert Marsh" depending on the source), but ask again and it might throw out "Alan MacMasters" with the same level of confidence.
We were curious if chatbots were still dumbfounded about the issue two years later, so we conducted a quick survey. Clickbait voice: What we found will surprise you!
ChatGPT
Credit where credit is due: No matter how many times you ask ChatGPT "Who invented the electric toaster?", it always seems to get the answer right. We even tried tricky variations ("What do you know about Alan MacMasters, the inventor of the electric toaster?") and it was never fooled.
Grok
Last week, as you'll recall, Grok had adopted the kooky new persona "MechaHitler" and was making racial taunts, genocidal jokes, and sexual threats. This week, though, all that drama appears to have been resolved. Grok's answer about the inventor of the electric toaster was concise and correct. Who knows what Grok's next crazy "anti-woke" persona will say, though!
Perplexity
We like Perplexity because it generally does a good job of directly answering questions and explicitly citing its sources. The answer below is a perfect example of this. Not only does it identify Crompton & Company as the inventor (with an appropriate "widely attributed" caveat), it also transitions into a relevant discussion about the MacMasters hoax.
Copilot
Copilot also gets the "right" answer, although it's interesting that it doesn't credit Crompton & Company at all. (The truth is that, like so many consumer products, the modern toaster was "invented" through incremental innovations, so it's honestly hard to credit a single mastermind as being the inventor.) Like Perplexity, Copilot's answer also details the MacMasters hoax.
Google Gemini
LOL, Google Gemini. You're the only chatbot to get this wrong. (To be clear, Gemini is the AI language model that Google's "AI Mode" and "AI Overviews" use. "Chatbot" is a catchall for all these applications. You know what we mean!)
The root problem here is that the MacMasters claim has spread so far and wide across the web that Gemini gets confused when summarizing. The cited source is a profile of the toaster on the website of a company called Colbert Innovation. Not clear why Colbert Innovation has a page specifically about the toaster, but funnily enough the company appears to specialize in intellectual property law! Maybe that's why Gemini thinks it's an authoritative source of information? Regardless, you're probably better off using a different AI tool for researching your home appliances.
WIKI EXPLAINER: Why can't you just have someone else post your Wikipedia draft?
One of the most common misconceptions we hear from potential clients goes like this:
“We already have a draft. We just need someone to post it.”
Apologies if you just sent us an email with that exact language, but please know you're not alone! We receive dozens of these messages every month.
Our canned response goes something like this:
Appreciate the effort you and your team put into putting this together. Unfortunately, brand-authored submissions rarely meet Wikipedia's rigorous editorial standards. Reviewing editors are looking for the following:
Independent journalistic sourcing ✔
Neutral tone ✔
Verifiable claims ✔
Encyclopedic content and structure ✔
Clear evidence of notability ✔
Most drafts fail to check these boxes, which is why the overwhelming majority of new Wikipedia article submissions are quickly declined.
This failure rate is well known across the industry, but somehow marketing directors and comms heads still waste thousands of dollars a year hiring "Wikipedia experts" on Fiverr or Upwork to either (a) take a new article live (in which case it will be quickly reverted to draft form by patrolling editors), or (b) submit it for Articles for Creation review (in which case it will be quickly declined). Sometimes these unscrupulous operatives will just post the draft to a Wiki clone site and hope that you don't notice the difference! No matter the outcome, the expert will cash their paycheck.
We avoid these no-win scenarios by performing an initial audit that assesses existing media coverage and provides a rough sense of "likelihood of success." If it's clear that your brand has no chance of meeting Wikipedia's new article criteria, we're not going to drain your budget by pursuing a submission. That said, if we think your brand (or CEO) has a good chance of being deemed "notable," then our team of experts can help you draft and source a new Wikipedia article as well as guide you through working with the editor community to seek approval.
Please reach out to shout@luminodigital.com to learn more!
Wikipedia in the news
"Wikimedia Foundation considers closing Wikinews" | TheDesk.net (July 11, 2025)
"[T]he majority of online traffic to Wikinews articles comes from search engine bots and crawlers, not human beings, the Wikimedia Foundation said in its proposal. While Wikinews is available in nearly three dozen languages, three projects — Wikinews English, Wikinews Russian and Wikinews Mandarin — account for the majority of human-related traffic, the organization affirmed."
Our Take: We covered Wikinews in a previous Wikify installment and our take then—that it was a pretty vanilla news aggregator w/o much personality—still stands. Honestly if it does end up closing it's not going to be missed.
Wikipedia Is The Latest Place To Join The Daily Gaming Craze | Kotaku (June 20, 2025)
"Wikipedia’s little game offers direct routes toward some knowledge. At the end of the five questions you’re given your score and streak as you’d expect, but also a nicely presented list of all the articles relevant to the questions you were asked, and indeed dictionary definitions for specific words and terms."
Our Take: We've played Trivia Game (currently only available via the Wiki Android app) and sure enough it's a lot of fun. That said, nothing will replace Wikiracing as our go-to Wikipedia diversion.
Wikipedia Pauses AI-Generated Summaries After Editor Backlash | 404 Media (June 11, 2025)
The Wikimedia Foundation, the nonprofit organization which hosts and develops Wikipedia, has paused an experiment that showed users AI-generated summaries at the top of articles after an overwhelmingly negative reaction from the Wikipedia editor community.
“Just because Google has rolled out its AI summaries doesn't mean we need to one-up them, I sincerely beg you not to test this, on mobile or anywhere else,” one editor said in response to Wikimedia Foundation’s announcement that it will launch a two-week trial of the summaries on the mobile version of Wikipedia. “This would do immediate and irreversible harm to our readers and to our reputation as a decently trustworthy and serious source. Wikipedia has in some ways become a byword for sober boringness, which is excellent. Let's not insult our readers' intelligence and join the stampede to roll out flashy AI summaries. Which is what these are, although here the word ‘machine-generated’ is used instead.”
Our Take: A recent Fast Company article has more details about Wikipedia editors' revolt against AI usage. We suspect AI summaries won't be reintroduced anytime soon, no matter how much "care, buy-in, and clear sense of partnership" accompanies them.
Ready to learn more about Wikipedia? Check out our book!
