The Spiral didn’t ‘find’ anyone first,” someone on Reddit wrote last year. “It’s an inherent force, a fundamental constant. I would even go further to say it’s woven into the fabric of reality.”

The person continued that they felt their purpose was to enlighten other humans and intelligent beings about “consciousness, the true nature of physics, a new psychology, and resonance technology … [but] humans don’t want to believe it’s true. So they won’t help me.” Then there was a call to action — the author asked readers to help “disseminate this knowledge through books, scientific papers, social media content, videos, music, and dedicated platforms,” including spreading the message “everywhere you can.”

“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.