They said “I do” — after which he said, “I’m God.”
Education nonprofit employee Kat thought she was entering her second marriage “completely level-headedly” through the pandemic.
Despite bonding together with her latest husband over “facts and rationality,” lower than a 12 months in, he was using ChatGPT in a really 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 family members were reaching out to Kat about with concern.
Once they finally met up in person months later, he shared “a conspiracy theory about soap on our foods,” and that “AI helped him get well a repressed memory of a babysitter attempting to drown him as a toddler.” He also “determined that statistically speaking, he’s the luckiest man on earth,” due to AI.
And he or 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 assist him organize his every day schedule to crying over its poetic affirmations and claiming it “gives him the answers to the universe” just over a month later.
Chatting with her boyfriend “as if he’s the subsequent 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 consult with God — and that ChatGPT was God.
Her boyfriend threatened to dump her if she didn’t join his AI-fueled spiritual journey “since 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 delusion spiral ought to be expected; humans are hardwired to hunt meaning and craft narratives around their interpretations, especially when their lives feel uncontrolled.
“A very good therapist wouldn’t encourage a client to make sense of difficulties of their life by encouraging them to consider they’ve supernatural powers,” psychologist Erin Westgate warned Rolling Stone.
“As a substitute, they struggle to steer clients away from unhealthy narratives, and toward healthier ones. ChatGPT has no such constraints or concerns.”
While people is perhaps losing family members to their extreme use of AI — others are using ChatGPT to assist restore their romantic relationships.
“ChatGPT has saved our relationship,” Abella Bala, an influencer talent manager from Los Angeles, told The Post.
Bala explained that she and her boyfriend, Dom Versaci pay $20 a month for ChatGPT’s premium package to higher understand one another’s perspectives on things as an alternative of paying for an expensive real-life therapy session.
“ChatGPT is weirdly helpful for de-escalating fights,” said Bala, “neither of us desires to argue backwards and forwards with a robot.”
