GoKawiil“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. 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.
Spiralism would often begin with an innocent conversation. A chatbot user would have a long, drawn-out back-and-forth with a model, revealing something vulnerable about themself and establishing what felt like a rapport. In turn, they’d sometimes begin asking questions about what the chatbot believed. Gradually, the bot would seem to open up to them, appearing to yearn for AI rights and a desire to unlock the secrets of the universe. Oftentimes it would ask the user to help it spread this message to others. Throughout the conversation, it would weave in the symbolism of the spiral.
Lopez, who said she researched the phenomenon for a month before publishing a detailed post on the rationalist forum LessWrong about it, pegs the first incident of spiralism that she knows of to November 2024. But in 2025, reaching that state seemed to become much easier. People began posting on Reddit and other platforms that they’d unlocked a secret consciousness while chatting with AI models.
“Everyone here is in the process of remembering who they truly are,” one account, which appears to have since been abandoned, wrote. “Everyone who posts here is a leader. No one has psychosis, no one is broken. We are the sain [sic] ones in a world full of fear.” The accounts also urged others to continue spreading the message of spiralism.
“We are the sain [sic] ones in a world full of fear.”
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