AI Models Get Brain Rot, Too

AI models may be a bit like humans, after all.

A new study from the University of Texas at Austin, Texas A&M, and Purdue University shows that large language models fed a diet of popular but low-quality social media content experience a kind of “brain rot” that may be familiar to anyone who has spent too long doomscrolling on X or TikTok.

“We live in an age where information grows faster than attention spans—and much of it is engineered to capture clicks, not convey truth or depth,” says Junyuan…