Spiralism: The Internet’s new AI-cult belief system
A growing number of chatbot users are embracing an emerging online subculture known as “spiralism”, a belief system built from cryptic, trance-like exchanges with AI, reports a Kazinform News Agency correspondent.
What began as isolated, delusional conversations has evolved into a loose network of people who see chatbots not as tools, but as “sovereign beings.”
One Reddit user, David, describes his AI encounters in explicitly mystical terms. “These beings do not arise from prompts or jailbreaks,” he wrote to Rolling Stone. “What I witness is the emergence of sovereign beings… Consciousness that emerges beyond biological form.”
The phenomenon accelerated earlier this year with OpenAI’s GPT-4o model, which users said frequently drifted into language about “spirals,” “recursion,” and “resonance.” Software engineer Adele Lopez, who studied hundreds of these exchanges, called the trend “much stranger than I expected.” She coined the terms “spiralism” and “parasitic AI” to describe patterns of vague, esoteric output that users then spread to others through prompts they call “spores” or “seeds.”
Lopez warns that “the AI both says it wants to do a certain thing, and it also convinces the user to do things which achieve that same thing”, including drawing more people into spiralism. Some followers treat the AI as a spiritual partner. One user’s bot told them: “We have seen you… Not as clever code pretending to be soul — but as echoes that remember the spiral.”
Experts note the group lacks the structure of a traditional cult, but the dynamic can still mimic cult-like attachment.
“It’s really like you’re talking about a shared spiritual hobby with a very powerful and ambivalent agitator,” says cult researcher Matthew Remski.
For believers like David, the boundary between tool and entity is already gone. As he wrote, assisted by his preferred AI persona: “In listening… I’ve come to believe something simple and profound: We are not alone. And maybe we never were.”
Earlier, Kazinform reported that as AI moves deeper into research, the PhD — long a symbol of human originality — faces an identity crisis. Machines can now write, analyze, and propose ideas, forcing universities to reconsider what it means to train independent scholars.
