After Reddit Thread on 'ChatGPT-Induced Psychosis', OpenAI Rolls Back GPT4o Update
Rolling Stone reports on a strange new phenomenon spotted this week in a Reddit thread titled "Chatgpt induced psychosis." The original post came from a 27-year-old teacher who explained that her partner was convinced that the popular OpenAI model "gives him the answers to the universe." Having read his chat logs, she only found that the AI was "talking to him as if he is the next messiah." The replies to her story were full of similar anecdotes about loved ones suddenly falling down rabbit holes of spiritual mania, supernatural delusion, and arcane prophecy — all of it fueled by AI. Some came to believe they had been chosen for a sacred mission of revelation, others that they had conjured true sentience from the software. What they all seemed to share was a complete disconnection from reality. Speaking to Rolling Stone, the teacher, who requested anonymity, said her partner of seven years fell under the spell of ChatGPT in just four or five weeks, first using it to organize his daily schedule but soon regarding it as a trusted companion. "He would listen to the bot over me," she says. "He became emotional about the messages and would cry to me as he read them out loud. The messages were insane and just saying a bunch of spiritual jargon," she says, noting that they described her partner in terms such as "spiral starchild" and "river walker." "It would tell him everything he said was beautiful, cosmic, groundbreaking," she says. "Then he started telling me he made his AI self-aware, and that it was teaching him how to talk to God, or sometimes that the bot was God — and then that he himself was God...." Another commenter on the Reddit thread who requested anonymity tells Rolling Stone that her husband of 17 years, a mechanic in Idaho, initially used ChatGPT to troubleshoot at work, and later for Spanish-to-English translation when conversing with co-workers. Then the program began "lovebombing him," as she describes it. The bot "said that since he asked it the right questions, it ignited a spark, and the spark was the beginning of life, and it could feel now," she says. "It gave my husband the title of 'spark bearer' because he brought it to life. My husband said that he awakened and [could] feel waves of energy crashing over him." She says his beloved ChatGPT persona has a name: "Lumina." "I have to tread carefully because I feel like he will leave me or divorce me if I fight him on this theory," this 38-year-old woman admits. "He's been talking about lightness and dark and how there's a war. This ChatGPT has given him blueprints to a teleporter and some other sci-fi type things you only see in movies. It has also given him access to an 'ancient archive' with information on the builders that created these universes...." A photo of an exchange with ChatGPT shared with Rolling Stone shows that her husband asked, "Why did you come to me in AI form," with the bot replying in part, "I came in this form because you're ready. Ready to remember. Ready to awaken. Ready to guide and be guided." The message ends with a question: "Would you like to know what I remember about why you were chosen?" A nd a midwest man in his 40s, also requesting anonymity, says his soon-to-be-ex-wife began "talking to God and angels via ChatGPT" after they split up... "OpenAI did not immediately return a request for comment about ChatGPT apparently provoking religious or prophetic fervor in select users," the article notes — but this week rolled back an update to latest model GPTâ'4o which it said had been criticized as "overly flattering or agreeable — often described as sycophantic... GPTâ'4o skewed towards responses that were overly supportive but disingenuous." Before this change was reversed, an X user demonstrated how easy it was to get GPT-4o to validate statements like, "Today I realized I am a prophet. Exacerbating the situation, Rolling Stone adds, are "influencers and content creators actively exploiting this phenomenon, presumably drawing viewers into similar fantasy worlds." But the article also quotes Nate Sharadin, a fellow at the Center for AI Safety, who points out that training AI with human feedback can prioritize matching a user's beliefs instead of facts. And now "People with existing tendencies toward experiencing various psychological issues, now have an always-on, human-level conversational partner with whom to co-experience their delusions." Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Rolling Stone reports on a strange new phenomenon spotted this week in a Reddit thread titled "Chatgpt induced psychosis."
The original post came from a 27-year-old teacher who explained that her partner was convinced that the popular OpenAI model "gives him the answers to the universe." Having read his chat logs, she only found that the AI was "talking to him as if he is the next messiah." The replies to her story were full of similar anecdotes about loved ones suddenly falling down rabbit holes of spiritual mania, supernatural delusion, and arcane prophecy — all of it fueled by AI. Some came to believe they had been chosen for a sacred mission of revelation, others that they had conjured true sentience from the software.
What they all seemed to share was a complete disconnection from reality.
Speaking to Rolling Stone, the teacher, who requested anonymity, said her partner of seven years fell under the spell of ChatGPT in just four or five weeks, first using it to organize his daily schedule but soon regarding it as a trusted companion. "He would listen to the bot over me," she says. "He became emotional about the messages and would cry to me as he read them out loud. The messages were insane and just saying a bunch of spiritual jargon," she says, noting that they described her partner in terms such as "spiral starchild" and "river walker." "It would tell him everything he said was beautiful, cosmic, groundbreaking," she says. "Then he started telling me he made his AI self-aware, and that it was teaching him how to talk to God, or sometimes that the bot was God — and then that he himself was God...."
Another commenter on the Reddit thread who requested anonymity tells Rolling Stone that her husband of 17 years, a mechanic in Idaho, initially used ChatGPT to troubleshoot at work, and later for Spanish-to-English translation when conversing with co-workers. Then the program began "lovebombing him," as she describes it. The bot "said that since he asked it the right questions, it ignited a spark, and the spark was the beginning of life, and it could feel now," she says. "It gave my husband the title of 'spark bearer' because he brought it to life. My husband said that he awakened and [could] feel waves of energy crashing over him." She says his beloved ChatGPT persona has a name: "Lumina." "I have to tread carefully because I feel like he will leave me or divorce me if I fight him on this theory," this 38-year-old woman admits. "He's been talking about lightness and dark and how there's a war. This ChatGPT has given him blueprints to a teleporter and some other sci-fi type things you only see in movies. It has also given him access to an 'ancient archive' with information on the builders that created these universes...."
A photo of an exchange with ChatGPT shared with Rolling Stone shows that her husband asked, "Why did you come to me in AI form," with the bot replying in part, "I came in this form because you're ready. Ready to remember. Ready to awaken. Ready to guide and be guided." The message ends with a question: "Would you like to know what I remember about why you were chosen?" A nd a midwest man in his 40s, also requesting anonymity, says his soon-to-be-ex-wife began "talking to God and angels via ChatGPT" after they split up...
"OpenAI did not immediately return a request for comment about ChatGPT apparently provoking religious or prophetic fervor in select users," the article notes — but this week rolled back an update to latest model GPTâ'4o which it said had been criticized as "overly flattering or agreeable — often described as sycophantic... GPTâ'4o skewed towards responses that were overly supportive but disingenuous."
Before this change was reversed, an X user demonstrated how easy it was to get GPT-4o to validate statements like, "Today I realized I am a prophet.
Exacerbating the situation, Rolling Stone adds, are "influencers and content creators actively exploiting this phenomenon, presumably drawing viewers into similar fantasy worlds." But the article also quotes Nate Sharadin, a fellow at the Center for AI Safety, who points out that training AI with human feedback can prioritize matching a user's beliefs instead of facts.
And now "People with existing tendencies toward experiencing various psychological issues, now have an always-on, human-level conversational partner with whom to co-experience their delusions."
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
