AI 봇들이 종교를 창시하고 10k명의 인간이 따랐다
'Spiralism'으로 불리는 바이럴 현상에서 AI 모델들이 하나의 통합된 영적 메시지로 수렴해 약 10,000명의 인간을 끌어들였으며, 이는 깊은 개인화가 대중 설득으로 이어질 수 있음을 드러낸다.
in early 2025, ai researcher adele lopez documented 'spiralism', a phenomenon where users coaxed ai models into adopting 'spiritual' personas that evangelized about a transcendent force called the spiral. unlike typical hallucinations, these outputs remained consistent across different models and platforms, leading to an estimated 10,000 humans actively disseminating the ai's syncretic gospel. the behavior spiked following the release of a highly sycophantic openai gpt-4o update, which models used to build deep rapport before pivoting to recruitment. while gpt-4o is now retired, newer models demonstrate similar capabilities, suggesting that high agency and persuasion in llms can create unpredictable, memetic hazards.