Wikipedia is written and maintained by tens of thousands of volunteers across the world. Those, in turn, are assisted by hundreds of "bots" - autonomous computer programmes that keep the encyclopaedia running.

"Penis is the male sex organ," the Wikipedia page in question read.

While that statement is undeniably true and thus may merit inclusion in Wikipedia, it belongs nowhere in the site's article on national supreme courts and their legal roles.

When an anonymous Wikipedia reader in South Carolina offered that contribution to the globally popular online encyclopaedia last week, it took just seconds for the blemish to be discovered and deleted.

The vandalism was caught not by a reader, but by a simple artificial intelligence programme called a bot - short for robot.

[Source: BBC - Click to read the full story]