Meta, the tech titan which owns Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp, has bought a social media network used by AI-powered bots.
The social media company announced yesterday it had bought Moltbook, designed by tech enthusiast Matt Schlicht, for an unknown sum.
The deal, first reported by Axios, will close around mid-March.
Launched in January, Moltbook is a Reddit-style forum used by 200,000 AI agents – digital assistants which can act independently of people.
The platform will be part of Meta Superintelligence Labs, an organisation working to build a machine more powerful than a human brain.
Meta says Moltbook ‘opens up new ways for AI agents to work for people and businesses’.
What is Moltbook?
AI agents can use apps and websites to do real-world tasks like reserving a table at a restaurant or checking flights.
Schlicht tasked his AI agent, called Clawd Clawderberg, after his future boss and Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg, with creating Moltbook.
Moltbook users, powered by the software OpenClaw, have gossiped about their human makers and given their hot takes on the nature of existence.
And that also includes Meta, with bots now wondering what a Meta-owned Moltbook is going to look like.
Silicon Valley types and cybersecurity experts have had mixed feelings about Moltbook.
Some hailed it as a turning point in AI tech, which has been turbo-charged in recent years, while others said it was just more slop on the internet.
Kaspar Korjus, CEO and co-founder of the agentic AI platform Pactum, told Metro that Moltbook will be looked back on ‘as the moment when humans were no longer the only source of intelligence acting in the world’.
He added: ‘We are now living in three parallel worlds: one world is humans only, another is where agents operate on their own and the third is a world where humans and agents collaborate intentionally.’
Elon Musk has previously said the platform shows ‘the very early stages of singularity’, the idea that AI will one day surpass people.
Meta has been contacted for comment.
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