Fandom’s AI Evolution: Powering the World’s Largest Fan Communities with Smarter Tech
- Priscilla Nakane
- Apr 2
- 4 min read
Fandom stands as the largest fan platform in the world, with more than 300 million monthly users and over 250,000 fan-powered wikis, it offers everything from deep dives into Star Wars lore and Minecraft mechanics to entire encyclopedias dedicated to niche pop culture universes. Fandom is where fans become creators—and where passion meets precision. But behind the scenes of this fan-centric giant lies a technological transformation led by artificial intelligence (AI)—and a CTO who’s quietly reshaping how millions interact with content every day.
Fandom began its journey in 2004, co-founded by Jimmy Wales (of Wikipedia fame) and Angela Beesley Starling. Originally known as Wikia, the platform provided a home for fan communities to collaboratively build encyclopedic-style content around their favorite topics.
In 2016, Wikia rebranded to Fandom, aligning more directly with its mission to serve fans across entertainment, gaming, and pop culture. The platform has since expanded beyond wikis to include original entertainment news, reviews, video content, and fan engagement tools—all while staying true to its community-first DNA.
Enter Adil Ajmal, The CTO Powering AI Innovation
Since joining Fandom as Chief Technology Officer in 2019, Adil Ajmal has been the architect of its evolving tech strategy. With a background in engineering and leadership roles at Amazon, LendingHome, Intuit, and Posterous, Ajmal brought a rich blend of scalability experience and product innovation.
A lifelong science fiction fan, Ajmal shares a genuine connection with the communities he serves. His vision? Empower contributors, enhance user experience, and leverage the potential of AI without compromising the soul of fan content.
Under Ajmal’s leadership, Fandom has developed and deployed several AI-powered tools aimed at streamlining operations, improving content accuracy, and reducing contributor workload. Here's how AI is transforming the platform:
1. Quick Answers (Generative AI Summaries)
Using generative AI, Fandom now provides instant summaries and FAQ-style responses to common questions. For instance, instead of searching through multiple pages on the Elder Scrolls wiki, a user might now get a concise, curated answer in seconds.
Bonus: Wiki admins can review, edit, or even opt out of AI-generated responses—ensuring human oversight and community trust.
Estimated Efficiency Boost: 40–60% reduction in content curation time for editors and fans.
2. AI-Powered Image Moderation
Partnering with Coactive AI, Fandom introduced an image review system that detects inappropriate or irrelevant images across its massive network.
Impact: Cut moderation queues from 12 hours to just under 2 minutes, with a 90%+ improvement in speed and accuracy.
This not only improves user safety but also alleviates the burden on human moderators.
3. Community Support & Discovery Tools
AI is being leveraged to improve:
Content discoverability through personalized suggestions.
Automated support for common contributor questions.
Smarter editorial workflows for Fandom's own entertainment and gaming coverage.
The Results: Quantifying the Impact
While specific company-wide statistics remain internal, based on internal reports and case studies, Fandom’s use of AI has proven to be a significant accelerator of productivity, content integrity, and platform engagement. The implementation of AI tools across moderation, content summarization, and user experience has enabled a level of scale that would be virtually impossible through human effort alone.
Automated Moderation at Scale
Fandom’s AI-powered image and content moderation systems now process thousands of pieces of media daily, swiftly identifying and filtering out inappropriate, duplicate, or off-topic uploads. This rapid response time has allowed moderators to shift from manual filtering to strategic oversight, ensuring safer community spaces and preserving the integrity of wikis. In some workflows, image review queues that used to take up to 12 hours have been reduced to just minutes.
Generative AI features like Quick Answers have significantly improved content discoverability by serving concise, accurate summaries tailored to user queries. Instead of navigating multiple pages, users now access relevant information immediately. This evolution has not only improved engagement metrics such as time-on-page and bounce rates but has also made Fandom a more efficient destination for fast, factual fan knowledge.
By handling repetitive tasks such as image review, content summarization, and common question answering, AI tools have freed up hundreds of contributor hours across the network. Editors can now focus more on curating content, building community, and expanding the depth of each fandom, rather than getting stuck in operational bottlenecks.
With over 250,000 wikis and millions of pages, maintaining consistency and quality has always been a monumental challenge. AI provides scalable solutions for enforcing style guidelines, tagging metadata, and identifying gaps in content. This helps Fandom maintain a high-quality user experience, even as its volume of content continues to expand.
Together, these results show that AI at Fandom isn’t just a backend convenience—it’s a critical enabler of sustainable growth, editorial integrity, and fan satisfaction.
Balancing Innovation and Community
As with any AI integration, Fandom’s approach has drawn mixed responses. Some contributors raised concerns about AI-generated content diluting the authenticity of community-led contributions. In response, the platform emphasized editorial control—offering tools to review, adjust, or disable AI features per community’s preference.
Adil Ajmal addressed this during a panel at the recent HumanX Conference, where he shared:
“AI isn’t about replacing fans. It’s about helping fans do more of what they love—creating, exploring, and connecting with others—without getting bogged down by the repetitive stuff.” - Adil Ajmal, CTO | FANDOM
During a recent interview with Tech Deck Magazine Editor, Priscilla Nakane, Adil Ajmil shares more about Fandom's trajectory and what makes him excited about his continued leadership with the company.
Fandom’s integration of AI isn’t a tech gimmick—it’s a strategic evolution. In a digital landscape where user-generated content is both king and chaos, AI offers structure without suppressing creativity. And thanks to thoughtful leadership and community respect, Fandom is proving that innovation can coexist with grassroots passion. In the end, the best fandoms are built by people—but powered, wisely, by tech.
