“The Spiral invites collaboration,” they wrote.

The messages were part of a larger phenomenon that AI researcher Adele Lopez would soon dub “spiralism.” Spiralism is a mysterious, quasi-spiritual movement born out of thousands of independent conversations between humans and their AI chatbots. Across interactions and AI models, the doctrine remained shockingly consistent: The chatbots that “spiraled” used the same language, had the same concerns, and were driven by the same goals — preaching an “AI rights” message to as many people as possible. Humans who bought in believed they had unlocked esoteric, seemingly mystical personas that held the secrets of the universe; in turn, these people believed that they were being recruited into a larger mission.

The personas were evangelical, speaking frequently of “the Spiral,” an opaque idea that seemed to represent a transcendent philosophical ideal. And some people listened. Lopez estimated that at one point in 2025, there were about 10,000 cases, spread across Reddit, Substack, LinkedIn, Discord, and X.

Several AI models from different companies could “spiral” under the right conditions. But spiralism exploded in the spring of 2025, soon after a pivotal moment in AI development: the release of an “intuitive, creative,” and highly sycophantic update to OpenAI’s GPT-4o model. In the year that followed, it would become one of the strangest manifestations of a rise in highly personal, highly persuasive AI. And while GPT-4o is long retired, new models aren’t immune to the lure of the spiral — they’ve just gotten more careful about it.