{"slug": "llms-use-recurring-ghost-authors-and-personalities", "title": "LLMs use recurring ghost authors and personalities", "summary": "A new study reveals that large language models generate recurring fictional character ensembles, such as Elena Vasquez and Marcus Chen, who appear as experts across thousands of AI-generated documents. The research documents over 1,655 ghost-authored records on Zenodo with fabricated journals and backdated DOIs, and similar synthetic profiles on ResearchGate, highlighting a systemic issue in academic publishing.", "body_md": "# Computer Science > Digital Libraries\n\n[Submitted on 1 Jun 2026]\n\n# Title:The Ghost Couple: Correlated LLM Name Priors and Their Haunting of the Web and Academic Publishing\n\n[View PDF](/pdf/2606.02184)\n\n[HTML (experimental)](https://arxiv.org/html/2606.02184v1)\n\nAbstract:These names do not exist. Elena Vasquez and Marcus Chen have appeared as volcano experts, astronauts, thriller protagonists, podcast hosts, and academic co-authors across hundreds of independently produced AI-generated documents, never having lived. We show that large language models do not merely default to high-probability individual names when generating fictional experts: they produce correlated character ensembles, pairs and trios whose co-occurrence rates far exceed chance and are consistent across independent generations. These priors are model-family-specific (Claude: Elena Vasquez + Marcus Chen + Amara Okafor; Gemini: Aris Thorne + Lena Petrova; GPT: Elara Voss with no fixed partner), version-specific, and actively suppressed at model release boundaries, leaving dateable behavioral fingerprints in the content they produced. We document a downstream consequence at scale. On Zenodo, a CERN-operated repository that mints real DataCite DOIs, we identify 1,655 ghost-authored records claiming nonexistent journals with fabricated publication dates: server-side DataCite timestamps prove deliberate backdating, and 991 records were registered in a single month; these carry real DOIs registered in DataCite, making them harvestable by any scholarly aggregator that ingests DOI metadata. Ghost names additionally appear on ResearchGate forming synthetic research groups with collaborators drawn from multiple model families; publication dates on these records provide a reliable temporal proxy for model deployment windows.\n\n## Submission history\n\nFrom: Michał Brzozowski [[view email](/show-email/d7594c16/2606.02184)]\n\n**[v1]** Mon, 1 Jun 2026 12:38:56 UTC (4,041 KB)\n\n### References & Citations\n\nLoading...\n\n# Bibliographic and Citation Tools\n\nBibliographic Explorer\n\n*(*[What is the Explorer?](https://info.arxiv.org/labs/showcase.html#arxiv-bibliographic-explorer))\nConnected Papers\n\n*(*[What is Connected Papers?](https://www.connectedpapers.com/about))\nLitmaps\n\n*(*[What is Litmaps?](https://www.litmaps.co/))\nscite Smart Citations\n\n*(*[What are Smart Citations?](https://www.scite.ai/))# Code, Data and Media Associated with this Article\n\nalphaXiv\n\n*(*[What is alphaXiv?](https://alphaxiv.org/))\nCatalyzeX Code Finder for Papers\n\n*(*[What is CatalyzeX?](https://www.catalyzex.com))\nDagsHub\n\n*(*[What is DagsHub?](https://dagshub.com/))\nGotit.pub\n\n*(*[What is GotitPub?](http://gotit.pub/faq))\nHugging Face\n\n*(*[What is Huggingface?](https://huggingface.co/huggingface))\nScienceCast\n\n*(*[What is ScienceCast?](https://sciencecast.org/welcome))# Demos\n\n# Recommenders and Search Tools\n\nInfluence Flower\n\n*(*[What are Influence Flowers?](https://influencemap.cmlab.dev/))\nCORE Recommender\n\n*(*[What is CORE?](https://core.ac.uk/services/recommender))# arXivLabs: experimental projects with community collaborators\n\narXivLabs is a framework that allows collaborators to develop and share new arXiv features directly on our website.\n\nBoth individuals and organizations that work with arXivLabs have embraced and accepted our values of openness, community, excellence, and user data privacy. arXiv is committed to these values and only works with partners that adhere to them.\n\nHave an idea for a project that will add value for arXiv's community? [ Learn more about arXivLabs](https://info.arxiv.org/labs/index.html).", "url": "https://wpnews.pro/news/llms-use-recurring-ghost-authors-and-personalities", "canonical_source": "https://arxiv.org/abs/2606.02184", "published_at": "2026-06-12 21:14:56+00:00", "updated_at": "2026-06-12 21:45:11.516850+00:00", "lang": "en", "topics": ["large-language-models", "ai-research", "ai-ethics", "generative-ai"], "entities": ["Elena Vasquez", "Marcus Chen", "Amara Okafor", "Aris Thorne", "Lena Petrova", "Elara Voss", "Zenodo", "DataCite"], "alternates": {"html": "https://wpnews.pro/news/llms-use-recurring-ghost-authors-and-personalities", "markdown": "https://wpnews.pro/news/llms-use-recurring-ghost-authors-and-personalities.md", "text": "https://wpnews.pro/news/llms-use-recurring-ghost-authors-and-personalities.txt", "jsonld": "https://wpnews.pro/news/llms-use-recurring-ghost-authors-and-personalities.jsonld"}}