When the researchers asked 25 different LLMs (including models from the top US firms as well as open-source models from China and elsewhere) 50 times each to write a metaphor about time, most of the 1,250 responses were a version of “Time is a river” or “Time is a weaver.”
(I asked some of my colleagues the same question and six people gave me six different answers. My highlight: “Time is a favorite sweatshirt, shaped by a lifetime of wear.”)
When you look for it, you see repetition everywhere, says Kieran Browne, cofounder and CTO at Springboards. “The way that most chat interfaces are designed, it makes it feel like you’re having a personal conversation,” he says. “I think most people don’t really realize the extent to which they are getting the same stuff as everybody else.”
Another example: If you ask “What should I name my band?” Most models will say something involving “glass,” “neon,” “velvet,” or “static,” says Browne.
When I tried it, ChatGPT spat out a list of 56 band names. At the top was “Glass Harbor.” Skimming through, I found “Static Empire,” “Neon Hearts,” and “Velvet Echo.” I asked Gemini; it gave me 15 suggestions, including “Static Horizon.”
Some of the suggestions looked pretty cool, though. ChatGPT’s “Sofa Astronauts” caught my eye, so I googled it—and found that a band called Sofa Astronauts already exists.
(OpenAI says that training models to give reliable and coherent answers can lead them to converge around familiar, high-probability responses and that pushing harder for novelty can lead to weaker or less reliable responses. It also notes that the “Artificial Hivemind” paper studied models from 2024 that have since been updated.)
Creative catapult
Springboards has developed a tool backed by a selection of LLMs, including ChatGPT and Claude, that creative professionals in advertising or marketing can use to brainstorm ideas. The tool lets you drag around text produced by different models, picking the bits that you like and combining them into something new—in theory. Springboards is pitching Flint as an alternative model that users of its tool can select when looking for more variety.
