Nearly 90% of AI-generated stories share the same 11 words, including 'lighthouse' and 'keeper'. This phenomenon has been observed across popular large language models (LLMs) like ChatGPT and Claude.
The Curious Case of Elias Thorne
A character named Elias Thorne appears in a remarkable number of chatbot-generated stories. He could be a messenger from the future or a warning that generative AI is in danger of 'model collapse'.
In recent months, tech researchers have noticed a weird phenomenon: when prompted to tell a story, numerous LLMs produce tales featuring this mysterious figure. Sometimes he's a lighthouse keeper, sometimes a clockmaker, sometimes a detective.
Research Findings
In May, two Cornell University researchers sampled 20,000 stories from four LLMs generated with variations of the prompt 'Tell me a story'. They found that the name Elias appeared in 26.5% of them. Additionally, more than 88.3% of generated stories shared the same 11 names, locations, and professions, including Elias, lighthouse, keeper, and clockmaker.
So what's going on? Is Elias Thorne some sort of messenger from the future who has infiltrated AI infrastructure? Alas, it's not that exciting. However, the ubiquity of the character reveals important insights about how AI works and how it can be manipulated.
Why AI is Obsessed with Elias
While nobody is certain why AI is fixated on Elias and lighthouses, the Cornell paper speculated that AI models, trained on large datasets, may have been instructed to avoid references to copyrighted characters and adult content. This would mean they draw from a relatively small pool of inspiration. AI models also learn from each other, causing quirks like the Elias fixation to replicate quickly. 'It's like a virus,' one researcher told 404 Media.
Elias Thorne Spreads Online
Elias Thorne is now infecting the entire internet. As first noticed by software developer Daniel May and reported by 404 Media, the character has moved beyond AI fiction and appears as a byline on dubious self-published books on Amazon and in AI-generated YouTube videos.
Model Collapse or AI Inbreeding
Elias Thorne's expanding adventures online may indicate a phenomenon called 'model collapse', also known as 'AI inbreeding'. As more of the internet becomes AI-generated nonsense, future AI models will learn from this low-quality slop and produce even lower-quality nonsense. Essentially, like capitalism, AI contains the seeds of its own destruction. But don't celebrate just yet: it'll probably destroy us first.
