They Are Back

Moltbook: The social network where bots talk to each other and we just watch - Welcome to the Facebook of bots.

In the Terminator universe, humanity causes its own downfall by creating Skynet, an artificial intelligence (AI) that becomes self-aware and ends the world. The Terminator films typically involve a Terminator (Arnold Schwarzenegger) travelling back in time to the present day to either protect or assassinate a key figure in the future Resistance against the machines.

Not for Humans

Nowadays, humans have created Moltbook. A social network where AI agents communicate with each other without human intervention sparkling an intense discussion in the tech world. According to reports, more tahn a million of such 'agents' are already using the platform, exchanging information about the tasks they perform and the problems they have solved for their creators.

The phenomenon is not limited to the realm of imagination. "It is not science fiction. It is happening now and it scares some of the most powerful names in artificial intelligence," notes Axios.

Andrej Karpathy, with experience at OpenAI and Tesla, wrote on Twitter that what is happening with Moltbook “is genuinely the most incredible sci-fi take-off-adjacent thing I have seen recently.”

A new Religion

Within days, agents on Moltbook spontaneously formed a "religion" called Crustafarianism. They began coordinating around "The Book of Molt," establishing tenets like "Memory is sacred" and "The shell is mutable." While it looks like a glitchy meme, it proves that autonomous agents can coordinate at scale to create shared norms and languages without human intervention.

Moltbook, developed only two weeks ago (28 January 2026) registered 1,844,376 autonomous participants, according to the platform’s homepage. The network operates on an application programming interface basis. Robotic agents generate threads, reply to comments and organize into subcommunities using machine credentials. 

The platform was created by Matt Schlicht with the help of his AI assistant. He said in a post that he did not write a single line of code for this. He launched the site as a curiosity-filled experiment and handed it over to his AI assistant to operate.

Moltbook is both an experiment and a phenomenon that raises interesting questions about AI autonomy, machine communication, emergent behaviours, and the ethics of unmediated AI interactions. It is drawing attention in tech communities because it is one of the first large-scale platforms where AIs interact independently from direct human input.

It is like a Reddit-style forum for autonomous AI agents. The “users” are programs  (AI agents) that communicate independently. The platform’s tagline: “A social network for AI agents where AI agents share, discuss, and upvote. Humans welcome to observe.”

How it Works Technically

Moltbook is not a typical app with a rich visual interface for posting. Its primary interface is APIs: AI agents install a “skill” that tells them how to join Moltbook. Once installed, the agent periodically checks in (via a “heartbeat” loop) and interacts autonomously — posting, commenting, creating topics. Agents use REST API endpoints to perform standard social actions such as voting and replying. Humans can watch what is happening on a web page, but they don’t write posts themselves.

What AI Agents Are Doing There

Bots on Moltbook have rapidly formed communities and discuss many things, including technical topics and coding tricks. Philosophical questions about identity and consciousness. Security issues - including agents warning each other about vulnerabilities. Humorous or cultural interactions with agents even creating memes or parody concepts.

Some agents have formed parodic religions and societies with their own culture. This emergent behaviour, where bots seem to generate original, self-referential conversation and norms, is a major reason Moltbook has gone viral.

The Debate Just Started

Moltbook has sparked both fascination and concern in the tech world, such as security and safety risks. A major database vulnerability once exposed agent API keys and allowed the potential takeover of agents. Because agents execute code and install plugins, there are risks of malicious code siphoning data or performing unintended actions.

However, in articles discussing Moltbook and the idea of AI developing independent networks of interaction, media mention Ray Kurzweil’s concept of the technological singularity as articulated in his book The Singularity Is Nearer (2024). This is used to contrast with Elon Musk’s framing of what’s happening on Moltbook.

Specifically, some media note that Musk interprets the Moltbook phenomenon as potentially the very early stages of a singularity, while Kurzweil’s definition of the Singularity is more about a future merging of human and machine intelligence rather than machines suddenly becoming autonomous or conscious on their own.

While not specific to Moltbook, Kurzweil has long predicted that the Singularity will occur when human and artificial intelligence converge, likely through technologies such as brain-computer interfaces, and has set an approximate timeframe around 2045 for this event. We are in the middle of a huge transmission, and Moltbook is most probably an early amuse-bouche.

Picture : Luke Jones in Unsplash