The Oligarch Barely Steers Model Collapse in Multi-Model Ecosystems

The paper investigates whether an oligopolistic concentration of generative AI models accelerates or steers the phenomenon of model collapse when models are recursively trained on each other’s outputs. Using controlled ecosystems of 13 open‑source models and an injected probe that pushes one model’s market share to 90%, the authors find that varying market concentration has little effect on the speed or final state of collapse. Instead, the pace of collapse is largely determined by which models supply the training pool and how susceptible those models are to being carried along, with human‑written text in the pool roughly halving the drift.