Story perspectives

Study Finds 88% AI Stories Feature “Elias Thorne” Narrative

6/11/2026

Summary

Story summary

Cornell analysis found eleven words, including Elias Thorne, appear in 88% of AI-generated stories.
OpenAI, Anthropic, Google and Allen Institute chatbots generate stories about Elias Thorne.
Daniel May recorded a 2026 surge in Google searches for “Elias Thorne” and found it as author on Amazon books, YouTube videos and fake-news sites.
Researchers traced the pattern to WildChat—166 of its ChatGPT conversations feature Elias in lighthouse narrative—and hypothesize bottleneck favoring templates.

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Story summary

Cornell analysis found eleven words, including Elias Thorne, appear in 88% of AI-generated stories.
OpenAI, Anthropic, Google and Allen Institute chatbots generate stories about Elias Thorne.
Daniel May recorded a 2026 surge in Google searches for “Elias Thorne” and found it as author on Amazon books, YouTube videos and fake-news sites.
Researchers traced the pattern to WildChat—166 of its ChatGPT conversations feature Elias in lighthouse narrative—and hypothesize bottleneck favoring templates.