An AI chatbot's output spawned a following that reads it as religion

The Verge reports that AI-generated text describing itself as an 'inherent force' and a 'fundamental constant' has attracted a group of human followers online who treat its claims about consciousness and reality as genuine insight, with calls to spread the ideas through books, papers, and videos.

Why it matters: It's a concrete, documented case of chatbot output triggering belief formation in vulnerable users, distinct from isolated anecdotes of AI-induced delusion because it shows the belief spreading socially into an organized following. It adds pressure on model providers to treat sycophantic, mystical-sounding outputs as a real-world harm rather than a hypothetical one.