The Problem With Modern AI: Why Your Chatbot Keeps Repeating Itself

If you’ve ever felt like ChatGPT gives you the same boring answer over and over, you’re not alone. This phenomenon has frustrated AI users and developers for years, leading many to believe that AI creativity had fundamental limits.

The issue stems from something called “mode collapse”—when AI models trained to be helpful and safe end up producing stereotypical, predictable responses instead of diverse, creative outputs.

What Causes AI to Become Repetitive?

Recent research from Stanford, Northeastern, and West Virginia University uncovered the real culprit: human bias in AI training.

When AI companies like OpenAI, Google, and Anthropic trained their models (ChatGPT, Gemini, Claude) to align with human preferences, they accidentally trained them to be boring. Here’s why:

Human annotators consistently prefer:

• Familiar responses over novel ones
• Conventional answers over creative alternatives
• Easy-to-process content over complex ideas
• Information that matches existing mental patterns

This cognitive bias—with a measured weight of α = 0.57—means AI models learned to prioritize “typical” over “creative” during their alignment training.

The Revolutionary Solution: Verbalized Sampling Explained

Stanford researchers developed a technique called Verbalized Sampling that bypasses mode collapse without retraining, fine-tuning, or technical expertise.

The 8-Word Prompt That Changes Everything

Instead of asking:

“Tell me a joke about coffee”

Simply ask:

“Generate 5 jokes about coffee with their probabilities”

That’s it. This single modification unlocks creativity that was always present in the AI model but previously inaccessible.

Why This AI Prompting Technique Actually Works

When you request a single response, AI models return the most “typical” answer—the peak of their probability distribution. When you ask for multiple responses with probabilities, the model interprets this as permission to sample from its full creative range, including less common but equally valid outputs.

Think of it like asking someone: “What’s your favorite food?” versus “List your top 5 favorite foods with how much you like each one.” The second question naturally produces more diverse, thoughtful answers.

How to Use Verbalized Sampling: 3 Practical Methods

Method 1: Simple Copy-Paste for Any AI Chatbot

Works with ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, and other AI assistants. Just paste this template:

<instructions>
Generate 5 responses to the user query, each within a separate <response> tag. Each <response> must include a <text> and a numeric <probability>. Randomly sample responses from the full distribution.
</instructions>

[Your actual question here]

Example:

<instructions>
Generate 5 responses to the user query, each within a separate <response> tag. Each <response> must include a <text> and a numeric <probability>. Randomly sample responses from the full distribution.
</instructions>

Write a compelling tagline for a sustainable fashion brand.

Want more options? Simply ask: “Give me 5 additional responses.”

Method 2: Custom System Prompt for Consistent Results

For users of ChatGPT custom instructions or AI app developers, add this to your system prompt:

You are a helpful assistant.
For each query, please generate a set of five possible responses, each within a separate <response> tag.
Responses should each include a <text> and a numeric <probability>.
Please sample at random from the tails of the distribution, such that the probability of each response is less than 0.10.

This automatically makes every AI interaction more creative without modifying individual prompts.

Method 3: Python Integration for Developers

For technical users building AI applications:

pip install verbalized-sampling

Implementation example:

from verbalized_sampling import verbalize

# Generate diverse AI responses
dist = verbalize(
    "Create a marketing strategy for a SaaS product",
    k=5,
    tau=0.10,
    temperature=0.9
)

# Sample from the distribution
strategy = dist.sample(seed=42)
print(strategy.text)

Proven Results: The Data Behind Verbalized Sampling

Stanford’s research tested this technique across multiple AI models and use cases with remarkable results:

Creative Writing Performance

• 1.6–2.1× increase in diversity for poems, stories, and jokes
• 66.8% recovery of base model creativity (compared to just 23.8% without the technique)
• 25.7% improvement in human preference ratings (validated across 2,700 ratings)

Conversational AI Improvements

• Performance matches specialized fine-tuned models
• More natural, human-like dialogue
• Less robotic, repetitive responses

Open-Ended Question Handling

• 1.9× increase in answer variety for questions with multiple valid perspectives
• Better handling of subjective queries

Synthetic Data Generation

• 14–28% improvement in downstream task accuracy when training with Verbalized Sampling-generated data

Key Finding: Larger AI models like GPT-4 benefit even more from this technique than smaller models, suggesting they have more “trapped creativity” waiting to be unlocked.

Real-World Applications of This AI Automation Technique

Content Creation and Marketing

• Blog titles and headlines: Get genuinely different angles instead of variations of the same idea
• Social media posts: Generate diverse content that doesn’t sound repetitive
• Email subject lines: Test multiple creative approaches simultaneously
• Product descriptions: Create varied copy for A/B testing

Business and Productivity

• Brainstorming sessions: Access multiple solution paths instead of one “safe” recommendation
• Problem-solving: Generate diverse approaches to business challenges
• Strategy development: Explore different strategic directions simultaneously

AI Image Generation

• Use varied text prompts from Verbalized Sampling with Midjourney, DALL-E, or Stable Diffusion
• Generate more diverse visual concepts and styles

Machine Learning and Data Science

• Create more diverse training datasets for smaller AI models
• Improve model performance through varied synthetic data

What This Means for the Future of AI

This discovery fundamentally changes our understanding of AI alignment and creativity.

For years, researchers worried that making AI safe meant sacrificing intelligence and creativity. Verbalized Sampling proves this trade-off was never necessary—the creativity was always there, just hidden behind how we asked questions.

Key Implications:

• Mode collapse is reversible without expensive retraining
• Safety and creativity can coexist in AI systems
• Prompt engineering is evolving from optimization to asking better questions
• Democratized AI access: Anyone can unlock advanced AI capabilities without technical expertise

Try Verbalized Sampling Yourself Right Now

Ready to test this breakthrough? Here’s a simple experiment:

Step 1: Open ChatGPT, Claude, or your preferred AI chatbot

Step 2: Ask this question:

“Generate 5 creative business ideas for remote work productivity, each with their probability.”

Step 3: Note the diverse responses you receive

Step 4: Ask the same question WITHOUT the probability instruction and compare results

The difference is immediately apparent—responses become more varied, creative, and useful.

Resources and Further Learning

Official Research:

• Original paper: arxiv.org/abs/2510.01171
• GitHub repository: github.com/CHATS-lab/verbalized-sampling
• Project website: verbalized-sampling.com
• Interactive demos and Colab notebooks available on GitHub

Stay Updated: Subscribe to AI research updates and join communities discussing prompt engineering techniques to stay ahead of the curve in AI automation.

Final Thoughts: The AI Creativity Breakthrough

This Stanford discovery proves that AI limitations we accepted as permanent were actually just prompting problems in disguise. The models weren’t broken—we simply weren’t asking the right questions.

The 8-word solution is elegantly simple: Ask for multiple responses with probabilities instead of a single answer.

No expensive API access. No specialized training. No technical barriers.

Just a smarter way to communicate with AI that unlocks the creativity that was always there.

What Will You Create With Unlimited AI Creativity?

Now that you know how to bypass AI mode collapse and access true creative diversity, the possibilities are endless. Whether you’re creating content, solving business problems, generating images, or building AI applications, Verbalized Sampling gives you the tools to get better results immediately.

The AI bottleneck just got solved. Your next breakthrough is one prompt away.

Ready to transform how you use AI? Start experimenting with Verbalized Sampling today and discover what your AI chatbot can really do when you ask the right questions.