First, we should warn you that this story discusses suicide. This past week, the parents of a 16-year-old who took his own life filed a wrongful death suit against Open AI, which owns ChatGPT. They say that after their son expressed suicidal thoughts, ChatGPT began discussing ways he could end his life. The lawsuit is one of the first of

its kind, but there have been a number of reports about people developing distorted thoughts

or delusional beliefs triggered by interactions with AI chat thoughts. The repercussions can be severe,

causing some users to experience heightened anxiety and in extreme cases to harm themselves

or others.

It's been dubbed AI psychosis.

Dr. Joseph Pierre is a clinical professor in psychiatry at the University of California, San Francisco.

Dr. Pierre, this is not an official diagnosis yet.

It's not in any diagnostic manuals.

How do you define AI psychosis?

Well, psychosis is a term that roughly means that someone has lost touch with reality.

And the usual examples that we encounter in psychiatric disorders are either hallucinations where we're seeing or hearing things that aren't really there, or delusions, which are fixed false beliefs, like, for example, thinking the CIA is after me.

And mostly what we've seen in the context of AI interactions is really delusional things.

So these are delusions that are occurring in this

setting of interacting with AI chatbats. Are some people more susceptible to this than others?

Well, that's really the million dollar question. I distinguish between AI associated psychosis,

which just means that we're seeing psychotic symptoms in the context

of AI use.

But I also talk about AI exacerbated psychosis or AI-induced psychosis.

So the real question is, is this happening in people with some sort of pre-existing mental

disorder or mental health issue and the AI interaction is just fueling that

or making it worse, or is it really creating psychosis in people without any significant history?

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