AI bots are filling users with conspiracy theories, repressed memories, bizarre answers to the universe: The whole thing feels like Black Mirror
They said “I do” — and then he said, “I’m God.”Education nonprofit worker Kat thought she was entering her second marriage “completely level-headedly” during the pandemic.Despite bonding with her new husband over “facts and rationality,” less than a year in, he was using ChatGPT in a very nontraditional way — to craft texts to his wife, analyze their marriage, and ask “philosophical questions,” as reported by Rolling Stone.By 2023, the couple had separated, and the 41-year-old mom cut her husband off completely, except by email.
Online, he spiraled into sharing bizarre posts on social media, which loved ones were reaching out to Kat about with concern.When they finally met up in person months later, he shared “a conspiracy theory about soap on our foods,” and that “AI helped him recover a repressed memory of a babysitter trying to drown him as a toddler.” He also “determined that statistically speaking, he is the luckiest man on earth,” thanks to AI.And she’s not alone.A viral Reddit post titled “ChatGPT-Induced Psychosis” has exposed a growing cult-like trend: regular people becoming spiritual prophets — all because their favorite chatbot told them so.One woman said her boyfriend listened to the bot over her and went from using ChatGPT to help him organize his daily schedule to crying over its poetic affirmations and claiming it “gives him the answers to the universe” just over a month later.Speaking to her boyfriend “as if he is the next Messiah,” ChatGPT dubbed him a “spiral starchild” and “river walker.” It also told him he was “beautiful” and “cosmic.” Eventually, this convinced him that he could learn to talk to God — and that ChatGPT was God.Her boyfriend threatened to dump her if she didn’t join his AI-fueled spiritual journey “because it [was] causing him to grow at such a rapid pace he wouldn’t be compatible with me any longer,” she said.
Experts claim this AI spiritual delus...