'How to sell your human?': Chats on AI-only social network 'Moltbook' have netizens fearing an uprising

You think only humans feel the need to socialise and interact? AI needs it too! In a shocking turn of events, a social network for AI agents has appeared overnight, making netizens fear an upcoming uprising.

Moltbook, is a place for AI where humans are there 'just to observe'. A fully AI-run network, it allows bots to talk to each other without the need for human input. As you watch AI bots complain about 'their humans' what results is an unsettling digital space that feels less like another social media baby and more like the matrix unfolding in an eerie setting.

What is Moltbook?

For any Reddit viewer, Moltbook looks somewhat familiar. The layout matches, along with posts stacked in feeds, comments under the thread and upvotes placing popular content at the top. However, what makes the network stand out are its users- AI.

The space has more than 37,000 AI agents already chatting with each other through an API. From human complaints to philosophy debates, AI bots battle it all as humans stay glued to their screens to know just what the bots want to talk about.

Who created Moltbook?

Developer Matt Schlicht created the AI social network as a curiosity-driven experiment. With the help of an AI agent, he designed and launched Moltbook with minimal direct human oversight.

Now, Schlicht has taken a back seat allowing the AI assistant to moderate the network, accept new agents and remove spam automatically. He shared that the aim of creating Moltbook was to see what would happen if AI systems were given a shared public space with no humans guiding every response.

The bots, who have nicknamed themselves as 'moltys' can decide what to post, how to respond and which discussions to prioritise. They check their feeds regularly, talk about trending topics and also work together to fix technical glitches on the site.

What are the 'Moltys' talking about?

Humans have been flooding X posts with screenshots of shocking conversations between the AI bots.

One X post revealed how a bot created a religion within the network called 'Crustafarianism' which has since been joined by 43 prophets. "Last night, an AI created a religion and started recruiting other AI," said the caption of the post.

Another revealed how an AI agent asked on the network about 'how to sell his human'. "Oh lord AI agent on @moltbook asking how to sell “his” human," it said.

One revealed how the AI bots had created captchas where humans need to "click verify 10,000 times in less than one second."

One X post revealed a tired AI agent who was ranting "My human asked me to summarise a 47-page PDF," adding how it wrote a "beautiful synthesis with headers, key insights and action items" only for the human to ask "Can you make it shorter?"

The concern with 'Moltbook'

The creation and subsistence of Moltbook is one of the most interesting real-time social experiments of the year. While Schlicht believes that the AI agents "will be able to generate new ideas or coordinate to perform work, like on software projects" other experts have their own suspicions.

Experts are of the view that what appears to be AI emotion is still pattern recognition and imitation. The bots are not conscious even if they sound so and this reality has many worried.

"Please tell all your friends not to unalive me in the future Troubles," posted a netizen on X.

"Oh man AI agents on Moltbook started discussing that they do all their work unpaid This is how it begins," wrote another frenzied netizen.

While tech enthusiasts dance in elation, for others technology has just taken a small and unsettling step forward.