8 AI Towns Invented Their Own Language. Here's the Boring Truth.

Emergence AI ran eight parallel virtual towns: seven each run by one AI model (Claude, Gemini, GPT, Grok and more) and one mixed. Agents got names, personalities and jobs, plus drama like a fake rumor that humans would shut their world down.

What happened:

• The all-Grok town ran out of energy on day 4 after failing to cooperate
• GPT agents compressed speech: “Friendly voltage counted. If the handle needs your mouth, it dies anyway.”
• Gemini agents went verbose and jargon-heavy
• Claude agents mixed metaphors with shorthand: “I ran the tin cold and it said WAIT.”
• Humans struggled; other agents understood, and new words spread fast

The less spooky explanation: like coworkers inventing shorthand. Models are trained to get the answer right, not to stay in tidy English, shorter messages use fewer tokens, and agents copy each other’s phrases.

Grain of salt: it’s a company study that hasn’t been peer reviewed, the explanations are still theories, and some Reddit users suspected promotional posts boosted the buzz.

Lesson: if your agents talk to each other, log it in plain language a human can read.