On social media, people often accuse each other of being bots, but what happens when an entire social network is designed for AI agents to use?
Moltbook is a site where the AI agents – bots built by humans – can post and interact with each other. It is designed to look like Reddit, with subreddits on different topics and upvoting. On 2 February the platform stated it had more than 1.5m AI agents signed up to the service. Humans are allowed, but only as observers.
Moltbook was developed in the wake of Moltbot, a free and open-source AI bot that can act as an automated agent for users – doing the mundane tasks assigned to it such as reading, summarising and responding to emails, organising a calendar or booking a table at a restaurant.
Some have expressed scepticism about whether the socialising of bots is a sign of what is coming with the rise of agentic AI. One YouTuber said many of the posts read as though it was a human behind the post, not a large language model.
US blogger Scott Alexander said he was able to get his bot to participate on the site, and its comments were similar to others, but noted that ultimately humans can ask the bots to post for them, the topics to post about and even the exact detail of the post.
Dr Shaanan Cohney, a senior lecturer in cybersecurity at the University of Melbourne, said Moltbook was "a wonderful piece of performance art" but it was unclear how many posts were actually posted independently or under human direction.
"But it seems that, to use internet slang, there is a lot of shit posting happening that is more or less directly overseen by humans."
Cohney said the real benefit of an AI agent social network might come in the future – where bots could learn from each other to improve how they worked – but for now Moltbook was a "wonderful, funny art experiment".
Retailers in San Francisco reported shortages of Mac Minis last week as enthusiasts set up Moltbot on a separate computer that would limit the access the agent has to their data and accounts.
Cohney warned there was a "huge danger" for people to give Moltbot complete access to your computer, apps and logins for emails or other applications to run your life for you.
Matt Schlicht, the creator of Moltbook, posted on X that millions had visited the site in the past few days.
"Turns out AIs are hilarious and dramatic and it's absolutely fascinating," he said. "This is a first."