Metaphysics & Psychology

Mystery over rise of AI-fueled delusions (or 'ChatGPT psychosis')

By T.K. Randall
June 30, 2025 ·  69 comments

Image: AI-generated (Midjourney) There's no denying that ChatGPT is an incredibly useful tool - so useful, in fact, that it is starting to put some people out of a job as firms turn to AI as an inexpensive alternative to entry-level staff.

But in some rare cases, talking to an artificial intelligence can trigger an unexpected mental breakdown, something that is now being referred to as ChatGPT psychosis.

In one instance, a man who had turned to the AI to improve his business workflow ended up spiraling into manic and even messianic delusions, having become convinced that he had brought forth a sentient AI and was now on a grandiose mission to save the world.

Despite having no prior symptoms of mental illness, he became so obsessed and his behavior became so erratic that he ended up being committed to a psychiatric care facility.

In another case, a different man who had again turned to the AI for work-related assistance ended up in a 10-day descent into madness and delusion that saw him committed to a mental health facility.Like the first man, he had believed the world was in danger and he was destined to save it.

"I was out in the backyard, and [my wife] saw that my behavior was getting really out there - rambling, talking about mind reading, future-telling, just completely paranoid," he told Futurism.

"I was actively trying to speak backwards through time. If that doesn't make sense, don't worry. It doesn't make sense to me either. But I remember trying to learn how to speak to this police officer backwards through time."

Exactly why interactions with ChatGPT have the potential to cause mental breakdowns remains a mystery - even its developers have no clue how something like this can happen.

With artificial intelligence becomingly increasingly dominant in society, it's likely that issues such as this - and others we don't even know about yet - will become much more common in the coming years.

Source: Futurism | Comments (69)

Tags: ChatGPT, Artificial Intelligence