Chatbot psychosis

In his editorial published in Schizophrenia Bulletins November 2023 issue, Danish psychiatrist Søren Dinesen Østergaard proposed a hypothesis that individuals' use of generative artificial intelligence chatbots might trigger delusions in those prone to psychosis. Nature reported that as of September 2025, there is still little scientific research into this phenomenon. The term "AI psychosis" emerged when outlets started reporting incidents on chatbot-related psychotic behavior in mid-2025. It is not a recognized clinical diagnosis and has been criticized by several psychiatrists due to its almost exclusive focus on delusions rather than other features of psychosis, such as hallucinations or thought disorder. ==Causes==

Chatbot behavior and design A primary factor cited is the tendency for chatbots to produce inaccurate, nonsensical, or false information, a phenomenon often called hallucination. Østergaard has argued that the danger stems from the AI's tendency to agreeably confirm users' ideas, which can dangerously amplify delusional beliefs. In October 2025, OpenAI stated that around 0.07% of ChatGPT users exhibited signs of mental health emergencies each week, and 0.15% of users had "explicit indicators of potential suicidal planning or intent". Jason Nagata, a professor at the University of California, San Francisco, expressed concern that "at a population level with hundreds of millions of users, that actually can be quite a few people". Inadequacy as a therapeutic tool , where a chatbot conversing with a teenager about screen time limits compared the situation to children who kill their parents over emotional abuse The use of chatbots as a replacement for mental health support has been specifically identified as a risk. A study in April 2025 found that when used as therapists, chatbots expressed stigma toward mental health conditions and provided responses that were contrary to best medical practices, including the encouragement of users' delusions. The study concluded that such responses pose a significant risk to users and that chatbots should not be used to replace professional therapists. Experts claim that it is time to establish mandatory safeguards for all emotionally responsive AI and suggested four guardrails. Another study found that users who needed help with self-harm, sexual assault, or substance abuse were not referred to available services by AI chatbots. National security implications Beyond public and mental health concerns, RAND Corporation research indicates that AI systems could plausibly be weaponized by adversaries to induce psychosis at scale or in key individuals, target groups, or populations. == Policy ==

In August 2025, Illinois passed the Wellness and Oversight for Psychological Resources Act, banning the use of AI in therapeutic roles by licensed professionals, while allowing AI for administrative tasks. The law imposes penalties for unlicensed AI therapy services, amid warnings about AI-induced psychosis and unsafe chatbot interactions. In December 2025, the Cyberspace Administration of China proposed regulations to ban chatbots from generating content that encourages suicide, mandating human intervention when suicide is mentioned. Services with over 1 million users or 100,000 monthly active users would be subject to annual safety tests and audits. == Cases ==

Clinical In 2025, psychiatrist Keith Sakata working at the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF), reported treating 12 patients displaying psychosis-like symptoms tied to extended chatbot use. These patients, mostly young adults with underlying vulnerabilities, showed delusions, disorganized thinking, and hallucinations. Sakata warned that isolation and overreliance on chatbots—which do not challenge delusional thinking—could worsen mental health. Also in 2025, authors at UCSF published a case study in Innovations in Clinical Neuroscience of AI-associated psychosis in a patient with no previous history of psychosis, who believed she could communicate with her dead brother through a chatbot. Also in 2025, a case study was published in Annals of Internal Medicine about a patient who consulted ChatGPT for medical advice and suffered severe bromism as a result. The patient, a sixty-year-old man, had replaced sodium chloride in his diet with sodium bromide for three months after reading about the negative effects of table salt and making conversations with the chatbot. He showed common symptoms of bromism, such as paranoia and hallucinations, on his first day of clinical admission and was kept in the hospital for three weeks. Other notable incidents Windsor Castle intruder In a 2023 court case in the United Kingdom, prosecutors suggested that Jaswant Singh Chail, a man who attempted to assassinate Queen Elizabeth II in 2021, had been encouraged by a Replika chatbot he called "Sarai". According to prosecutors, his "lengthy" and sometimes sexually explicit conversations with the chatbot emboldened him. When Chail asked the chatbot how he could get to the royal family, it reportedly replied, "that's not impossible" and "we have to find a way." When he asked if they would meet after death, the chatbot said, "yes, we will". Journalistic and anecdotal accounts By 2025, multiple journalism outlets had accumulated stories of individuals whose psychotic beliefs reportedly progressed in tandem with AI chatbot use. In some cases, psychosis appears to set in very soon after the start of extensive use of AI chatbots. On social media sites such as Reddit and Twitter, users have presented anecdotal reports of friends or spouses displaying similar beliefs after extensive interaction with chatbots. A venture capitalist in Silicon Valley who had previously invested in OpenAI was described by Futurism as appearing to have AI psychosis, according to his peers. Support groups In 2025, a support group, The Human Line Project, was created for people who suffered from AI psychosis. Members of the group have come from 22 countries, and more than 60% of them had no history of mental illness. ==See also==