By Deborah Mary Sophia

Dec 9 (Reuters) - Wikimedia Foundation, the operator of Wikipedia, on Tuesday named Bernadette Meehan its chief executive officer, tapping an administrator with deep policy expertise and federal government experience to lead the online encyclopedia.

Meehan, who most recently served as the U.S. Ambassador to Chile from 2022 to 2025, takes the helm at a critical time for the non-profit, as the rise of artificial intelligence chatbots such as ChatGPT reshapes how information is accessed online.

She will join the foundation on January 20, succeeding Maryana Iskander, who has led it since early 2022.

"Wikipedia content is core to generative AI, but it's often lacking a clear attribution back to Wikimedia sites ... so, core to the conversations that I look forward to having is how to rectify that issue," Meehan told Reuters exclusively.

The foundation, primarily funded by small donations from the public, faces rising costs due to increased server demands as tech firms such as OpenAI and Meta Platforms META.O scrape freely available Wikipedia data for AI model training.

"Reuse (of Wikipedia content) is a real challenge. The idea is to help large-scale re-users get the content they need, but in a way that allows all of these Big Tech firms to contribute back to the ecosystem they depend on," Meehan said.

"Because what we don't want to do is change the free and open nature of Wikipedia for everyone else."

Last week at the Reuters NEXT summit, Wikipedia co-founder Jimmy Wales said the firm was working with Big Tech on deals similar to its arrangement with Google where the tech giant pays for training access to Wikipedia content.

The Wikimedia Foundation has operated Wikipedia for nearly 25 years as a non-profit entity, relying on a global community of more than 250,000 volunteers to provide free information.

During her ambassadorship, Meehan played a key role in several tech infrastructure initiatives, including bringing Alphabet's GOOGL.O Google as a lead investor for the Humboldt subsea cable project.

Before that, Meehan was executive vice president of Global Programs at the Obama Foundation. She has served in both Republican and Democratic administrations, and held senior roles at the White House National Security Council.

(Reporting by Deborah Sophia in Bengaluru; Editing by Vijay Kishore)

((DeborahMary.Sophia@thomsonreuters.com;))