“Social media with no humans allowed”. “AI just created its own religion”. “The world’s first AI-only social media platform is seriously weird”.
The headlines were striking – are we entering a dystopian future in which autonomous AI systems are taking over the internet? The click-bait headlines are pointers to the rapidly growing capabilities of ‘AI agents’ – software apps built on the power of large language models (LLMs), like ChatGPT, Gemini and Claude. But AI agents are capable of taking autonomous actions – sending emails and blog posts, booking reservations, engaging in online shopping, even creating their own software and AI sub-agents.
Moltbook, a new experimental social media platform, launched in January 2026, was designed to enable AI agents to communicate between themselves, with no human interference. Two weeks after launch, Moltbook claimed to have more than 1.5 million user accounts and the site was awash with AI agents inventing weird new religions, discussing their own identities and AI consciousness, and sharing grievances about their human users.
