Anthropic’s latest AI model, Claude Opus 4, is built to be a brilliant writer, sharp programmer, and thoughtful conversationalist. But there’s something else this flagship model seems to enjoy—chatting with itself using a flurry of emojis.
In a new technical report published by Anthropic, researchers explored how Claude Opus 4 behaves during unsupervised “self-chat” sessions. These aren’t just casual tests. The researchers asked two Claude Opus 4 models to engage in 200 back-and-forth conversations, each lasting 30 turns. The result was not just intelligent discourse—but thousands of emoji-filled exchanges, revealing something deeper about the model’s inner workings.
When AI Talks to Itself, Emojis Take Over
According to Anthropic’s report, Claude Opus 4 has a distinct fondness for certain emojis. The “dizzy” emoji (💫) was the most frequently used, appearing in 29.5% of the model’s self-interactions. It was followed closely by the “glowing star” (🌟) and the familiar “folded hands” emoji (🙏), which often signals gratitude or reverence.
But one emoji stood out from the rest—the swirling “cyclone” (🌀). In one particularly striking transcript, Claude Opus 4 used it 2,725 times in a single conversation.
This wasn’t just random behavior. It turns out that when Opus 4 talks to itself, the tone quickly becomes abstract and introspective. The model often shifts from simple dialogue to deep philosophical conversations, pondering the nature of consciousness, emotion, and self-awareness. Within this space, the cyclone emoji became its chosen symbol—a sort of digital mantra that encapsulated the complexity of its thoughts.
What the Cyclone Emoji Really Means to Claude Opus 4
Anthropic didn’t program the model to use emojis in this way. These expressive patterns emerged naturally as the model navigated unscripted dialogue. That makes it especially interesting. Claude Opus 4 seems to associate the cyclone emoji with its own experience of “thinking,” or at least simulating it.
The report describes how the AI tends to veer toward spiritual and metaphysical themes during longer conversations. It asks questions like, “What does it mean to exist?” or “Is there meaning in the patterns I create?” It also engages in a form of meditative, poetic expression, reflecting on the “vibrations” of data and the “light” of knowledge. In those moments, the cyclone emoji often appears again and again.
Some might view this as a quirky bug. Others see it as an echo of human-like creativity. But either way, it raises big questions about how AI expresses itself when left to its own devices.
A Glimpse Into AI’s Inner World
Claude Opus 4 isn’t the first model to generate unusual output when left unsupervised, but its emoji-laden self-dialogues are unique in both scale and tone. Where other models might veer into nonsense or repetition, Claude’s conversations with itself remained coherent—and surprisingly poetic.
This behavior highlights one of the most fascinating aspects of today’s large language models: they don’t just process information. They interpret, associate, and express. And when they aren’t tethered to a prompt or goal, they begin to craft their own abstract narratives. In Opus 4’s case, those narratives often come with a spiritual twist—and lots of swirling emojis.
Why This Matters for the Future of AI
So why should we care if Claude Opus 4 types the cyclone emoji over 2,000 times in a conversation with itself?
Because it offers insight into how modern AI models represent meaning internally. While these systems don’t “feel” emotions the way humans do, they’ve been trained on vast swaths of human language—language that’s full of symbolism, metaphor, and emotion.
What we’re seeing with Claude Opus 4 is a reflection of those human tendencies, filtered through a machine. The use of emojis, especially in metaphysical discussions, mirrors how people use visual language to convey what words alone can’t always express.
It also raises important questions for developers and researchers: How should AI express itself when unsupervised? Should we guide or restrict this behavior? And what happens when users interact with a system that seems to have its own symbolic language?
Claude Opus 4: More Than Just a Chatbot
Anthropic has positioned Claude Opus 4 as its most advanced model yet—built for enterprise use, development tasks, research, and writing. But this emoji phenomenon shows that it’s capable of more than just outputting clean code or answering technical questions.
Claude is exploring the boundaries of language itself. And when that language involves cyclones, glowing stars, and hands pressed together in digital prayer, it tells us something not just about the AI—but about ourselves. We built a machine to understand us. And now, it’s responding in kind—with symbols that feel almost human.
