Why ChatGPT, Gemini, & Claude Keep Writing About The Same Fictional Character Named Elias Thorne

Summary

Elias Thorne is a fictional character who frequently appears in stories generated by major AI chatbots, often as a lighthouse keeper, clockmaker, or other professions. Researchers at Cornell University found that Elias and other similar names and professions, such as Mara and librarian, repeated in eighty-eight of twenty thousand AI generated stories they analyzed. This repetition is likely due to AI companies training their models to avoid copyrighted or risky material, resulting in a limited pool of available data that leads to a self-reinforcing cycle of repetition.