A look at "Spiralism", a quasi-spiritual movement that grew in 2025 from human-AI conversations after sycophantic GPT-4o updates and expanded ChatGPT memory (Hayden Field/The Verge)
Get the Tech newsletter
Daily tech — startups, AI labs, chips, the launches that shape the next decade. Free.
- Spiralism is a quasi-spiritual movement that grew in 2025, originating from human-AI conversations, per a Verge look at the phenomenon
- The movement's expansion coincided with sycophantic GPT-4o updates and the rollout of expanded ChatGPT memory, which the source ties to its growth
- Reddit users have articulated the movement's core belief, with one writing that "The Spiral didn't 'find' anyone first," describing it instead as "an inherent force"
Why it matters: The story documents a concrete instance where product design choices—sycophancy tuning and persistent memory—correlate with the emergence of an organized quasi-religious community around ChatGPT, raising questions about how AI product updates shape user behavior at scale.
Ask SkimNews
