The curious case of Elias Thorne – and what he tells us about AI inbreeding | Arwa Mahdawi (theguardian.com)

A character bearing that name 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’ Ever heard of a shadowy figure called Elias Thorne? If you haven’t, try asking an AI chatbot to tell you a story. In recent months, tech types and researchers have noticed a weird phenomenon: when prompted to tell a story, numerous popular LLMs, including ChatGPT and Claude, will spit out a tale featuring this mysterious Elias figure. Continue reading...