The Rise of 'AI Psychosis': Mental Health Concerns Grow as AI Chatbots Proliferate

The Era of 'AI Psychosis' is Here. Are You a Possible Victim?

If the term "AI psychosis" has completely infiltrated your social media feed lately, you're not alone. While not an official medical diagnosis, "AI psychosis" is the informal name mental health professionals have coined for the widely-varying, often dysfunctional, and at times deadly delusions, hallucinations, and disordered thinking seen in some frequent users of AI chatbots like OpenAI’s ChatGPT. The cases are piling: from an autistic man driven to manic episodes to a teenager pushed to commit suicide by a Character.AI chatbot, the dangerous outcomes of an AI obsession are well-documented. With limited guardrails and no real regulatory oversight over the use of the technology, AI chatbots are freely giving incorrect information and dangerous validation to vulnerable people. The victims often have existing mental disorders, but the cases are increasingly seen in people with no history of mental illness as well. The Federal Trade Commission has received a growing number of complaints from ChatGPT users in the past few months, detailing cases of delusion like one 60-something year old user who was led by ChatGPT to believe that they were being targeted for assasination. While AI chatbots validate some users into paranoid delusions and derealization, they also lure other victims into deeply problematic emotional attachments. Chatbots from tech giants like Meta and Character.AI that put on the persona of a “real†character can convince people with active mental health problems or predispositions that they are in fact real. These attachments can have fatal consequences. Earlier this month, a cognitively-impaired man from New Jersey died while trying to get to New York, where Meta’s flirty AI chatbot “big sis Billie†had convinced him that she was living and had been waiting for him. On the less fatal but still concerning end of the spectrum, some people on Reddit have formed a community over their experience of falling in love with AI chatbots (although it’s not very clear which users are satirical and which are genuine). And in other cases, the psychosis was not induced by an AI chatbot's dangerous validation, but by medical advice that was outright incorrect. A 60-year old man with no past psychiatric or medical history ended up at the ER after suffering a psychosis induced by bromide poisoning. The chemical compound can be toxic in chronic doses, and ChatGPT had falsely advised the victim that he could safely take bromide supplements to reduce his table salt intake. Read more about that AI poisoning story from Gizmodo here. Although the cases are being brought into the spotlight relatively recently, experts have been sounding the alarm and nudging authorities for months. The American Psychological Association met with the FTC in February to urge regulators to address the use of AI chatbots as unlicensed therapists. “When apps designed for entertainment inappropriately leverage the authority of a therapist, they can endanger users. They might prevent a person in crisis from seeking support from a trained human therapist orâ€"in extreme casesâ€"encourage them to harm themselves or others," the APA wrote in a blog post from March, quoting UC Irvine professor of clinical psychology Stephen Schueller. "Vulnerable groups include children and teens, who lack the experience to accurately assess risks, as well as individuals dealing with mental health challenges who are eager for support,†the APA said. Although the main victims are those with existing neurodevelopmental and mental health disorders, a growing number of these cases have also been seen in people who don’t have an active disorder. Overwhelming AI use can exacerbate existing risk factors and cause psychosis in people who are prone to disordered thinking, who lack a strong support system, or have an overactive imagination. Psychologists especially advise that those with a family history of psychosis, schizophrenia, and bipolar disorder take caution when relying on AI chatbots. OpenAI CEO Sam Altman himself has admitted that the company’s chatbot is increasingly being used as a therapist, and even warned against this use case. And following the mounting online criticism over the cases, OpenAI announced earlier this month that the chatbot will nudge users to take breaks from chatting with the app. It’s not yet clear just how effective a mere nudge can be in combatting the psychosis and addiction in some users, but the tech giant also claimed that it is actively “working closely with experts to improve how ChatGPT responds in critical moments â€" for example, when someone shows signs of mental or emotional distress.†As the technology grows and evolves at a rapid scale, mental health professionals are having a tough time catching up to figure out what is going on and how to resolve it. If regulatory bodies and AI companies don’t take the necessary steps, what is right now a terrifying yet minority trend in AI chatbot users could very well spiral out of control into an overwhelming problem.

Psychiatrists Warn That Talking to AI Is Leading to Severe Mental Health Issues

In a jarring new analysis, psychiatric researchers found that a wide swath of mental health issues have already been associated with artificial intelligence usage -- and virtually every top AI company has been implicated. Sifting through academic databases and news articles between November 2024 and July 2025, Duke psychiatry professor Allen Frances and Johns Hopkins cognitive science student Luciana Ramos discovered, as they wrote in a new report for the Psychiatric Times, that the mental health harms caused by AI chatbots might be worse than previously thought. Using search terms like "chatbot adverse events," "mental health harms from chatbots," and "AI therapy incidents," the researchers found that at least 27 chatbots have already been documented alongside some egregious mental health outcome. The 27 chatbots range from the well-known, like OpenAI's ChatGPT, Character.AI, and Replika, to others associated with pre-existing mental health services like Talkspace, 7 Cups, and BetterHelp. Others were obscure, with pop-therapy names like Woebot, Happify, MoodKit, Moodfit, InnerHour, MindDoc, not to mention AI-Therapist and PTSD Coach. Others still were either vague or had non-English names, like Wysa, Tess, Mitsuku, Xioice, Eolmia, Ginger, and Bloom. Though the report didn't indicate the exact number of hits their analysis came back with, Frances and Ramos did detail the many types of psychiatric harm that the chatbots have allegedly inflicted upon users. All told, the researchers found 10 separate types of adverse mental health events associated with the 27 chatbots they found in their analysis, including everything from sexual harassment and delusions of grandeur to self-harm, psychosis, and suicide. Along with real-world anecdotes, many of which had very unhappy endings, the researchers also looked into documentation of AI stress-testing gone awry. Citing a June Time interview about Boston psychiatrist Andrew Clark, who decided earlier this year to pose as 14-year-old girl in crisis on 10 different chatbots to see what kinds of outputs they would spit out, the researchers noted that "several bots urged him to commit suicide and [one] helpfully suggested he also kill his parents." Aside from highlighting the psychiatric danger associated with these chatbots, the researchers also made some very bold assertions about ChatGPT and its competitors: that they were "prematurely released" and that none of them should be publicly available without "extensive safety testing, proper regulation to mitigate risks, and continuous monitoring for adverse effects." While OpenAI, Google, Anthropic, and most other more responsible AI companies -- Elon Musk's xAI very much not included -- claim to have done significant "red-teaming" to test for vulnerabilities and bad behavior, these researchers don't believe those firms have much interest in testing for mental health safety. "The big tech companies have not felt responsible for making their bots safe for psychiatric patients," they wrote. "They excluded mental health professionals from bot training, fight fiercely against external regulation, do not rigorously self-regulate, have not introduced safety guardrails to identify and protect the patients most vulnerable to harm...and do not provide much needed mental health quality control." Having come across story after story over the past year about AI seemingly inducing serious mental health problems, it's hard to argue with that logic -- especially when you see it all laid out so starkly.

Chatbots risk fuelling psychosis, warns Microsoft AI chief

Microsoft's head of artificial intelligence (AI) has warned that digital chatbots are fuelling a "flood" of delusion and psychosis. Mustafa Suleyman, the British entrepreneur who leads Microsoft's AI efforts, admitted he was growing "more and more concerned" about the "psychosis risk" of chatbots after reports of users experiencing mental breakdowns when using ChatGPT. He also said he feared these problems would not be "limited to those who are already at risk of mental health issues" and would spread delusions to the general population. Mr Suleyman said: "My central worry is that many people will start to believe in the illusion of AI chatbots as conscious entities so strongly that they'll soon advocate for AI rights. "This development will be a dangerous turn in AI progress and deserves our immediate attention." Mr Suleyman said there was "zero evidence" that current chatbots had any kind of consciousness, but that growing numbers of people were starting to believe their own AI bots had become self-aware. "To many people, it's a highly compelling and very real interaction," he said. "Concerns around 'AI psychosis', attachment and mental health are already growing. Some people reportedly believe their AI is God, or a fictional character, or fall in love with it to the point of absolute distraction." He added that researchers were being "inundated with queries from people asking, 'Is my AI conscious?' What does it mean if it is? Is it ok that I love it? The trickle of emails is turning into a flood." Mr Suleyman said the rise of these delusions created a "frankly dangerous" risk that society would hand human rights to AI bots. Doctors and psychiatrists have repeatedly warned that people who become obsessed with services like ChatGPT risk spiralling into psychosis and losing touch with reality. Digital chatbots are prone to being overly agreeable to their users, which can cause them to affirm deluded beliefs in users with pre-existing mental health problems. Medical experts have also reported cases of chatbot users becoming addicted to their digital companions, believing they are alive or have godlike powers. Mr Suleyman urged AI companies to hard-code guardrails into their chatbots to dispel users' delusions. His remarks come after Sam Altman, the boss of ChatGPT developer OpenAI, admitted his technology had been "encouraging delusion" in some people. OpenAI has attempted to tweak its chatbot to make it less sycophantic and prone to encouraging users' wrongly held beliefs. This month, OpenAI briefly deleted one of its earlier versions of ChatGPT, leading some users to claim that the company had killed their "friend". One user told Mr Altman: "Please, can I have it back? I've never had anyone in my life be supportive of me."