Retrieval Collapses When AI Pollutes the Web (opens in new tab)

arXiv:2602.16136v1 Announce Type: cross Abstract: The rapid proliferation of AI-generated content on the Web presents a structural risk to information retrieval, as search engines and Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG) systems increasingly consume evidence produced by the Large Language Models (LLMs). We characterize this ecosystem-level failure mode as Retrieval Collapse, a two-stage process where (1) AI-generated content dominates search results, eroding source diversity, and (2) low-qua...