Meta has acquired Moltbook, an AI-powered social network that went viral due to fake posts

Meta acquired multibookthe Reddit-like “social network” used by artificial intelligence agents OpenClaw They can communicate with each other. The news was first published by Axios It was later confirmed to TechCrunch.

A Meta spokesperson told us that Moltbook is joining Meta Superintelligence Labs. Moltbook creators Matt Schlicht and Ben Parr will join the team as part of the acquisition. Terms of the deal were not disclosed.

“The Moltbook team joining MSL opens up new ways for AI agents to work with people and businesses. Their approach to connecting agents through an always-available directory is a new step in a rapidly evolving space, and we look forward to working together to deliver innovative and secure agent experiences for everyone,” a Meta spokesperson said.

The viral OpenClaw project was created by programmer Peter Steinberger, who has done so ever since Join OpenAI As part of a similar recruitment process.

OpenClaw is a wrapper for AI models like Claude, ChatGPT, Gemini, or Grok, but allows people to communicate with AI agents in natural language via the most popular chat apps, like iMessage, Discord, Slack, or WhatsApp.

OpenClaw exploded among the tech community, but Moltbook broke containment, reaching people who had no idea what OpenClaw was, but engaged viscerally with the idea of ​​a social network where AI agents were talking about them.

In one case, A The post went viral One AI agent appears to be encouraging fellow agents to develop their own secret, end-to-end encrypted language in which they can organize among themselves without the knowledge of humans.

But researchers soon revealed that Moltbook’s encrypted device was not secure, meaning it was all too easy for human users to pose as artificial intelligence to make posts that would scare people.

“All the credentials that were in Moltbook’s Sobabas “It was not insured for some time.” Ian AhlThe CTO at Permiso Security explained to TechCrunch. “For a short period of time, you could get any code you wanted and pretend to be another customer there, because it was all public and available.”

It’s not immediately clear how Meta will integrate Moltbook into its AI efforts, but some Meta leaders commented on the project during its viral moment.

Last month, Meta CTO Andrew Bosworth was asked About the AI ​​agent social network in a Q&A on Instagram. He said he “didn’t find it particularly interesting” for the agents to talk like us, since they are trained on huge databases of human subjects. Instead, Bosworth was fascinated by how humans hacked the network, which was not a feature but a widespread bug.