Check out "Egyptologists". Basically it was a fad in Britain for wealthy people to go to Egypt, come back, and tell everyone how great it was. This would cause other people to also go and report back.

But then what started happening was people would just read the accounts of people who actually went, and write their own books on Egypt ... without ever having gone. And of course, lots of people read their books.

Soon, Britain had this wildly distorted view of what "Egypt" was. Simple example: the British people were repressed prudes at the time, so when they got to a non-Prudish country they became a bit ... un-repressed. They fixated on sexual things, like the famous trope of the Egyptian belly dancer.

Repressed Britains back home (including the people writing books without first-hand knowledge) fixated on these aspects (because, again, they were repressed) and so there was this giant amplification of belly dancers and a similar sexual aspect ... when there was nothing especially sexy about Egypt (beyond not being as repressed).

There were other major (non-belly dancer) distortions as well of course, but the point is once you get this kind of echo chamber (from humans without first-hand experience or AIs), it inherently creates distortions that, instead of reflecting reality, reflect the viewer's own issues.