Cited by 84Generative Adversarial Networks and Image SynthesisAdversarial Robustness in Machine LearningEthics and Social Impacts of AI

Self-consuming generative models go MAD

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Casco-Rodriguez, Josue, Alemohammad, Sina, Luzi, Lorenzo, Imtiaz, Ahmed, Babaei, Hossein, LeJeune, Daniel, Siahkoohi, Ali, Baraniuk, Richard·2023·LatinX in AI at Neural Information Processing Systems Conference 2023

Abstract

Seismic advances in generative AI algorithms have led to the temptation to use AI-synthesized data to train next-generation models. Repeating this process creates autophagous (“self-consuming”) loops whose properties are poorly understood. We conduct a thorough analysis using state-of-the-art generative image models of three autophagous loop families that differ in how they incorporate fixed or fresh real training data and whether previous generations' samples have been biased to trade off data quality versus diversity. Our primary conclusion across all scenarios is that without enough fresh real data in each generation of an autophagous loop, future generative models are doomed to have their quality (precision) or diversity (recall) progressively decrease. We term this condition Model Autophagy Disorder (MAD) and show that appreciable MADness arises in just a few generations.

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  • Data ambiguity might precipitate the recycling of LLM-generated data in the training processes of subsequent models, which could adversely impact text generation quality and destabilize the research landscape.

    “An additional potential risk was articulated by Alemohammad et al. (2023), who posited that data ambiguity might precipitate the recycling of LLM-generated data in the training processes of subsequent models. This scenario could adversely impact the text generation quality of these emergent LLMs, thereby destabilizing the research landscape dedicated to the detection of LLM-generated text.”

    From A Survey on LLM-Generated Text Detection: Necessity, Methods, and Future Directions (2025) · cites this paper as Alemohammad et al. (2023)

    The Introduction and Discussion (pages not available in our copy) say that models can unknowingly train on AI-generated data and that repeated synthetic-data training can reduce quality or diversity; the Discussion explicitly extends the concern to text. The paper does not attribute this recycling specifically to “data ambiguity” or say it would destabilize research on detecting LLM-generated text. Its experiments use image models, not LLM text generation. (LLM, conf=0.86)

    Experimental — accuracy not yet measured

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Research works printed but not linked: 3

  1. Chengyuan Deng, Shihang Feng, Hanchen Wang, Xitong Zhang, Peng Jin, Yinan Feng, Qili Zeng, Yinpeng Chen, and Youzuo Lin. OpenFWI: Large-scale multi-structural benchmark datasets for full waveform inversion. In NeurIPS, 2022.
  2. Ahmed Elgammal, Bingchen Liu, Mohamed Elhoseiny, and Marian Mazzone. CAN: Creative adversarial networks, generating "art" by learning about styles and deviating from style norms. arXiv preprint arXiv:1706.07068, 2017. · arXiv
  3. Tero Karras, Samuli Laine, and Timo Aila. A style-based generator architecture for generative adversarial networks. In CVPR, 2019.

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Authors
Casco-Rodriguez, J., Alemohammad, S., Luzi, L., Imtiaz, A., Babaei, H., LeJeune, D., Siahkoohi, A., & Baraniuk, R.
Affiliations
Rice University (US)
Venue
LatinX in AI at Neural Information Processing Systems Conference 2023
Published
2023-12-10
OpenAlex
W4390430574
Cited by
83
References
54
Citations by year
2026: 13 · 2025: 46 · 2024: 18 · 2023: 6
FWCI
8.88
Type
conference paper
Language
en
Open access
Locations
  • LatinX in AI at Neural Information Processing Systems Conference (LXAI) (publishedVersion)
  • Rice Research Repository (Rice University) (submittedVersion)
Topics
  • Physical Sciences › Computer Science › Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition › Generative Adversarial Networks and Image Synthesis
  • Physical Sciences › Computer Science › Artificial Intelligence › Adversarial Robustness in Machine Learning
  • Social Sciences › Safety Research › Ethics and Social Impacts of AI
Keywords
self-training, generative image models, synthetic data, generative AI training, model degradation

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