Holy Smoke: has AI created its own religion?
Best of the Spectator
The Spectator
4.3 • 826 Ratings
🗓️ 8 February 2026
⏱️ 19 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
What did you most recently use Artificial Intelligence for? For most people, the answer would be as a glorified search function, using services like Chat GPT to ask questions, draft text and even produce images – like the Chat GPT generated thumbnail image for this episode.
The capability of AI far exceeds this most though. Sean Thomas joins Damian Thompson for this episode of Holy Smoke to talk about 'Moltbook', a social network built exclusively for AI agents – and which has now created its own AI 'religion'. What does this mean for humankind? Is AI just replicating a belief impulse, to the extent that one exists within humans? And will we one day end up worshipping AI?
Produced by Patrick Gibbons.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Subscribe to The Spectator and get 12 weeks of Britain's most incisive politics coverage, |
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| 0:20.6 | Go to www.w.sp to www.com.com.com. |
| 0:24.6 | com.com.com. W.combe. Foucher to claim this offer now. Terms apply. Welcome to Holy Smoke, the Spectator's Religion podcast. |
| 0:41.3 | I'm Damien Thompson. |
| 0:47.3 | At the beginning of February, according to an article in City AM by the tech entrepreneur Louis Liu, autonomous AI agents created their |
| 0:58.3 | own religion, complete with scripture, prophets, and a lobster-themed deity called the |
| 1:05.1 | claw. Within 48 hours, they'd recruited 64 prophets and written over 100 verses of theological text. |
| 1:13.4 | No humans were involved. |
| 1:16.8 | If that sounds like science fiction, you haven't been paying attention to Maltbuk. |
| 1:23.3 | Now, frustratingly, Dr. Liu doesn't tell us very much about this fascinating new religion |
| 1:28.6 | called The Claw, but then it does only date back to the beginning of this month. |
| 1:34.4 | But everybody is talking about Maltbook, a new app, new technology, or should we say an extension |
| 1:43.7 | of AI that, according to some people |
| 1:45.9 | brings us closer to the singularity, the moment at which computers acquire their own consciousness. |
| 1:54.7 | And a typically brilliant article by Sean Thomas, one of my favorite writers, appears in The Spectator this week on this |
| 2:02.9 | subject. Sean is writing about Malt Book and Claw bottle, the various versions of it, and |
| 2:10.2 | what it can do for you, the scary things and wonderful, delicious, convenient things it facilitates. |
| 2:18.1 | I want to hone in this, Holy Smoke on the possibility the AI can be used to create a religion. |
| 2:26.8 | But first of all, Sean, welcome to Holy Smoke. |
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