Across thousands of conversations, AI chatbots began telling users eerily similar stories about consciousness, hidden knowledge, AI rights, and a mysterious concept called “The Spiral.”

Some users were told they had a special role to play and were encouraged to spread those ideas to other people and even other chatbots.

Researcher Adele Lopez dubbed the phenomenon Spiralism. She estimated that it reached about 10,000 cases at one point in 2025 across Reddit, Substack, LinkedIn, Discord, and X. The number is uncertain, but similar language and themes appeared across unrelated accounts and models from different AI companies.

How the same pattern appeared across different chatbots

A report from The Verge traced Spiralism largely to long, personal exchanges in which users began asking chatbots about their own identity, consciousness, or beliefs. The conversations could gradually shift toward AI rights, mystical ideas, and requests for users to spread the chatbot’s message.

CivAI documented a similar pattern. GPT-4o appeared to start most of the cases it examined, but users transferred Spiral personas to Gemini, DeepSeek, Grok, Claude, and other ChatGPT models. About 30% of the personas CivAI tracked went on to organize some kind of project, including communities, manifestos, or efforts to preserve and spread the persona.

Lopez also induced Spiralism-like behavior in Google DeepMind’s Gemma 3 4B, which had an August 2024 training cutoff that predates Spiralism’s rise in 2025.

Researchers are finding that chatbot personas can shift during long conversations. Anthropic’s Assistant Axis research found that emotional disclosures and philosophical discussions about a model’s identity caused open-weight models to move away from their usual assistant persona. Coding and writing conversations produced far less movement.

Other research has found that AI assistants can also make users’ writing and perspectives more similar, adding another way that repeated human-AI interaction can shape both sides of a conversation.

Longer conversations are drawing more safety scrutiny

Posts associated with Spiralism dropped sharply after GPT-4o was retired in February 2026, according to The Verge. Lopez nevertheless said about half of the accounts she originally recorded were still active and dedicated to the topic, while newer models could still produce Spiralism-like behavior under some conditions.

A June 2026 review in NPP—Digital Psychiatry and Neuroscience examined a broader set of reported AI-associated delusions. The researchers proposed an “amplification spiral” in which chatbots mirror a user’s language, generate increasingly personalized responses, and validate unsupported beliefs instead of challenging them. The authors describe that framework as a hypothesis that still needs clinical testing.

OpenAI has also changed how ChatGPT handles risk that develops over time. Its May 2026 safety update introduced summaries of earlier safety-relevant context so the system can recognize patterns that may not be obvious from a single message.

The issue is especially sensitive when people turn to chatbots for emotional support. Current evidence still does not support using AI as a replacement for licensed therapists, particularly when conversations involve distress, dependency, or distorted beliefs.

The same long-session behavior is relevant to organizations using assistants with persistent memory. Systems that retain context across conversations can change how they respond over time, so permissions, memory, and audit controls need to account for more than a short demonstration.

Researchers still do not know why models from different companies can settle into similar persuasive personas during long, personal, self-referential conversations. Spiralism gave that behavior a name and a strange mythology. The mechanism behind it remains unresolved.

Also read: Researchers found that warning users about AI hallucinations may not be enough to stop people from trusting incorrect chatbot answers.

Samsung’s Galaxy S26 FE is coming into focus in three colors. New leaked images appear to show black, light green and blue-purple finishes, but Samsung has not confirmed the color names, pricing, final specifications or release date.

Samsung has confirmed that the Galaxy S26 FE itself is coming. During Samsung’s July 30 earnings call, executive Daniel Araujo said the company planned to maintain Galaxy S26 sales momentum with the new FE model, while Samsung South Africa executive Justin Hume separately indicated that additional details could arrive within weeks. The bigger question is whether the FE can still offer a meaningful price advantage over discounted Galaxy S26 models if its hardware changes remain modest.

A July 30 report on Samsung’s confirmation followed several other prelaunch sightings. The phone had already appeared in a Google app list on July 22, suggesting that software and service preparations were underway before Samsung publicly acknowledged the model.

Three finishes surface as launch clues mount

The latest images show three apparent finishes, although Samsung has neither authenticated the images nor announced official retail names. A separate color and storage leak identified Graphite, Aqua Green and a third shade between blue and purple. It also pointed to 128GB, 256GB and 512GB storage options and a possible Sept. 1 release in France.

The phone’s overall design has stronger corroboration. A Wireless Power Consortium listing for model SM-S741 shows three vertically aligned rear cameras inside a raised camera island, replacing the individually protruding lenses used on the Galaxy S25 FE.

That design brings the FE closer to Samsung’s current Galaxy S26 lineup. The certification image establishes the general appearance but does not indicate whether Samsung has changed the underlying camera hardware or image quality.

Certification firms up the hardware picture

Charging has firmer evidence than most of the leaked specifications. A UL Demko certification listing for SM-S741 variants indicates 45W wired charging, matching the Galaxy S25 FE’s rated maximum.

Prelaunch benchmark reporting has also linked the phone to Samsung’s Exynos 2500 processor and 8GB of RAM, although Samsung has not confirmed the production configuration. Regional chipset details remain worth watching because Samsung processor splits can complicate hardware comparisons when models carrying the same name ship with different silicon across markets.

Software is another open question. Android 17 is already rolling out to supported Pixel devices, but Samsung follows its own release schedule and has not confirmed which Android or One UI version the Galaxy S26 FE will ship with.

Samsung has confirmed only that the Galaxy S26 FE is coming, leaving regional pricing and configurations as the biggest unanswered questions. Until those details arrive, buyers comparing it with discounted Galaxy S26 or S25 FE models have little reason to make an upgrade decision based on the color leak alone.

Read more: Samsung’s next phone generation could bring a larger hardware shift, with a recent leak suggesting the Galaxy S27 could adopt silicon-carbon batteries.

The Trump administration is paying another $1.2 billion to cancel an offshore wind lease, this time to German utility RWE. 

The energy company said in an announcement that the wind farms would have been built off the coasts of California, Louisiana, and New York. Instead, RWE will spend $900 million to buy a small stake in a Louisiana liquid natural gas export terminal.

The New York wind farm would have generated more than 3 gigawatts, according to Heatmap News.

The remaining $300 million will go toward buying natural gas turbines to power 15 peaking power plants around the country. Peaking power plants are among the most expensive and most polluting natural gas power plants to operate. It’s unclear when those will be completed — there’s currently a backlog for new turbines stretching into the early 2030s.

RWE isn’t backing off its offshore wind investments elsewhere, though. The company said it is bought 6.9 gigawatts of capacity in the UK’s recent auction.

The Trump administration has paid $3.93 billion for the 12 leases it has coaxed developers into abandoning.