@tanyakaroli

The shape of the object extruded is based solely on the shape of the nozzle and the amount extruded.

LLM produced synthetic texts' "shape" is the standardised reproduction of the statistical patterns in the training set.

That's the exegesis of the term, for me.

@tanyakaroli @emilymbender

Synthetic Vs Natural (this all comes from 'natural' language processing) refers to the mode of production, not an intrinsic, pre-production characteristic, as text only exists after its production.

"Extruder" here is an image more than a technical descriptor, evoking industrial, mass production, indeed a specific process or pushing stuff though a nozzle to make long... things (think pasta machine).