Wikimedia Italia at the Internet Governance Forum 2026: agentic AI at the center

The events organized by Wikimedia Italia are concentrated on Thursday 29 October and will be held at the University Center of San Giovanni a Teduccio, home of the University of Naples Federico II. The program includes a plenary session and two workshops. The association brings the experience gained in over twenty years of activity to support free access to knowledge, through Wikipedia and other Wikimedia Foundation projects.

The plenary will be held in the Aula Magna from 10.10am to 11.15am and will focus on the opportunities and critical issues of agentic artificial intelligence systems, i.e. autonomous software capable of searching and processing information to perform complex operational tasks on behalf of those who use them. Ferdinando Traversa, president of Wikimedia Italia, will present the association’s position. Among the risks indicated are the reliability of the contents produced and the traceability of the sources. In terms of potential, automation can support the work of the community, provided that it remains under human control: the areas mentioned are cross-checking of sources, assisted translation and the fight against vandalism.

Participating in the debate are Enrica Priolo, lawyer and researcher at the University of Cagliari, and Germana Lo Sapio, judge of the TAR Campania. The moderators will be Gabriele Dini Ciacci, aerospace engineer and advocacy coordinator of Wikimedia Italia, and Agostino Clemente, lawyer, professor of Innovations and intellectual property at the University of L’Aquila and member of the IGF Italia committee.

Traversa indicated the IGF as an important forum for discussing the future of the network, described as a resource born as a common good and public space, today increasingly exposed to privatizations and closures. He also argued that Wikipedia, once called “the last good place on the Internet,” maintains a central function in the knowledge ecosystem even in the age of generative artificial intelligence, and that his support and participation in its projects should be a shared commitment.

Two workshops are scheduled in the afternoon dedicated to the functioning of artificial agents and the tools to make them more transparent and verifiable. The first, entitled “The verification of agentic web”, will see Balazs Nemethi of agentcommunity.org present a proposal to identify and verify agents present online, with reference to the themes of responsibility and governance. The second, “ghost_s in the shell – Free Agents in an artificial world”, is edited by Marco Montanari, independent researcher and member of the board of directors of Wikimedia Italia, and starts from the simulation of a world inhabited by artificial agents to analyze their behaviors and interactions. Participation is possible both in person and remotely, after registering on the official event page.