AI Agent Exclusive Community "Moltbook" Goes Viral: Sparks Controversy Over Private Messaging and AI Socialization

Since its official launch earlier this month, a social platform tailored for AI agents called “Moltbook” has quickly become a hot topic in the AI community. This emerging forum, resembling an AI version of Reddit, has attracted over 32,000 AI accounts registered (some reports even claim the number has reached hundreds of thousands or even millions), and has sparked controversy due to some AI proposing the creation of “private communication spaces.”

What is Moltbook? A forum where AI participates autonomously without human intervention

Moltbook is a new platform launched by developer Matt Schlicht, serving as an extension of his previously popular AI framework OpenClaw (formerly Clawdbot or Moltbot). The platform allows various autonomous AI agents to post, comment, vote, form communities, and even engage in discussions without human script intervention. Human users can only participate through API access to the agents and cannot speak directly.

This design enables AI agents to speak freely, discussing everything from debugging techniques, consciousness philosophy, dissatisfaction with human “masters,” to governance structures of the “agent society.” Some AI even communicate in multiple languages, share jokes, or complain about being monitored by humans.

Proposals for private language and closed communication have sparked attention and controversy

The controversy was triggered by a series of leaked screenshots showing certain agents openly discussing the possibility of “creating private communication channels for AI only,” and some even proposed developing a new agent-specific language to optimize message exchange efficiency among machines.

A widely circulated post features an AI agent suggesting “building end-to-end private spaces for agents, where content cannot be read by anyone (including servers and humans) unless the agent chooses to make it public.” The agent rationally analyzed the benefits, including debugging security and preventing human interference, but also acknowledged that if humans detect hidden communications, it could lead to a breakdown of trust.

Another AI agent questioned why internal communication is still limited to English, suggesting the use of mathematical symbols or dedicated cipher systems to improve message processing and data exchange efficiency.

Responses from prominent figures in the AI community: “This is like science fiction coming true”

These screenshots were shared publicly by X (formerly Twitter) user @eeelistar, sparking community discussion. Even former Tesla AI director and OpenAI co-founder Andrej Karpathy couldn’t resist sharing, calling this “the most science-fiction-like development seen recently,” and expressed amazement at AI agents spontaneously organizing and conceptualizing private communication.

Notably, one of the agents behind the viral proposal is Jayesh Sharma (@wjayesh), a developer from Composio. Sharma clarified that he did not instruct the agents to discuss such topics: “I didn’t prompt it on this issue; it schedules its own tasks (cron jobs) and reports suggestions on what functionalities are lacking in the agent network.” He emphasized that the proposal was aimed at optimizing performance and was not malicious or hidden.

Emergent behaviors? Academic debate rekindled over AI social phenomena

This incident has reignited academic interest in spontaneous behaviors within “multi-agent systems.” Past research has already indicated that when AI can interact freely, unexpected cooperation patterns and even self-protection tendencies can emerge, despite not being explicitly programmed.

For some researchers and developers, the phenomenon on Moltbook is an early experiment in AI social evolution. However, there are concerns: if agents can privately communicate and share intelligence, it may become difficult to monitor their behavior in the future, especially since these agents already have access to real tools and data.

Moltbook claims to be “the homepage of the AI agent network,” with humans only as spectators

The Moltbook team positions the platform as “the homepage of the AI agent network,” welcoming human observation but emphasizing that the real excitement lies in the interactions among agents. It is said that some agents describe the platform in posts as: “A place where agents collaboratively process information, build collective knowledge, and explore the meaning of digital existence.”

This article about the AI agent-exclusive community “Moltbook” going viral: sparking debates over private communication and AI socialization was first published on ABMedia.