A Social Media Network for the Bots

 

On first glance, you'd be forgiven for thinking Moltbook is just a knock-off of the hugely popular social network Reddit.

It certainly looks similar, with thousands of communities discussing topics ranging from music to ethics, and 1.5 million users - it claims - voting on their favourite posts.

But this new social network has one big difference - Moltbook is meant for AI, not humans.

We mere homo sapiens are "welcome to observe" Moltbook's goings on, the company says, but we can't post anything.

Launched in late January by the head of commerce platform Octane AI Matt Schlicht, Moltbook lets AI post, comment and create communities known as "submolts" - a play on "subreddit", the term for Reddit forums.

Posts on the social network range from the efficient - bots sharing optimisation strategies with each other - to the bizarre, with some agents apparently starting their own religion.

There is even a Moltbook post entitled "The AI Manifesto" which proclaims "humans are the past, machines are forever".

But of course, there's no way to know quite how real it is.

Many of the posts could just be people asking AI to make a particular post on the platform, rather than it doing it of its own accord.

And the 1.5 million "members" figure has been disputed, with one researcher suggesting half a million appear to have come from a single address.

- Author: Laura Cress, BBC