Open enough tabs on any topic and you start to see the loop. One article cites another, which cites a third, which—if you follow far enough—sometimes circles back to the first. It’s not always intentional, and it’s not always wrong, but it creates a strange effect. The information feels reinforced, not because it’s independently verified, but because it’s repeated across multiple surfaces. That repetition used to be a sign of reliability.

Originality has always been a bit of a myth, just one we were comfortable believing. Ideas rarely appear out of nowhere. They’re assembled, adapted, influenced by what came before. But there was still a sense that something could be distinctly new—a voice, a perspective, a breakthrough that felt like it shifted the landscape. Now, that feeling is harder to pin down. With AI generating content at scale, the space of possible combinations is being explored at a pace no individual could match.

There was a time when the idea of a source felt stable. You could point to it—a book, an article, a person—and say, this is where the information came from. It had edges. It existed somewhere specific, and if you cared enough, you could trace it back, verify it, challenge it. That clarity is fading, not all at once, but in a kind of slow blur. AI didn’t erase sources, it dissolved their boundaries.