July 2024, article from Rice University.

A study by Rice University warns that training generative AI models on synthetic data can lead to “Model Autophagy Disorder” (MAD), where AI systems degrade over successive generations. This degradation occurs as models trained on AI-generated data develop artifacts, leading to outputs that are progressively marred by errors.⁠

“The problems arise when this synthetic data training is, inevitably, repeated, forming a kind of a feedback loop — what we call an autophagous or ‘self-consuming’ loop.”