AI models can get brain rot, too

Image credit: Rachel Barton/Texas A&M Engineering. Article by  Amanda Norvelle. Texas A&M University – October 19, 2026. Research article: arXiv.

As humans and AI models roam the internet, they encounter lots of junk: clickbait headlines, misinformation, hashtags. Research by Dr. Zhengzhong Tu and his colleagues indicates this junk-filled environment could be a cause for concern. “Brain rot” has emerged as a term to describe cognitive changes — like diminished attention spans — in humans who engage with an abundance of frivolous, attention-grabbing content. Tu, assistant professor in the Department of Computer Science and Engineering at Texas A&M University, found that when large language models (LLMs) train on junk data, they can get brain rot, too. This research was recently accepted to the 2026 Conference on Language Modeling. […]

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