AI chatbots could quietly pull users away from reality, researchers warn

As AI chatbots become more emotionally responsive, conversational, and personal, researchers warn that these same traits could reshape how some users experience reality itself.

New first edition He studies“AI Psychosis Revisited: Misnomers, Conceptual Boundaries, and Existential Drift,” examines concerns that AI-powered chatbots may promote delusions, paranoia, and emotional dependency in vulnerable users.

“There has been a proliferation of media reports about so-called AI psychosis in the past year,” the researchers wrote. “Not surprisingly, this has led to a growing academic work on the ways in which AI-based chatbots such as ChatGPT, Claude, and An exact copy It may exacerbate or even cause psychosis, which is usually understood in terms of users acquiring or maintaining delusional beliefs.

Concerns about “AI psychosis” may oversimplify the problem, says the study conducted at the University of Copenhagen and the University of Exeter, suggesting that chatbots are amplifying existing vulnerabilities while gradually reshaping how users relate to reality and to other people.

“If AI interaction is able to induce new psychoses, we might expect to see much higher rates of clinical events,” the study said. “Alternatively, it may be theorized that human-AI interaction appears to have the potential to fuel or exacerbate pre-existing mental health issues – and relatedly, these individuals may also have had vulnerabilities that caused them to seek out more intense interactions with the chatbot in the first place.”

This paper comes at a time when lawsuits, criminal investigations, and academic studies are increasingly focusing on connected chatbot interactions Mass shooting, suicide, Emotional dependencyand Phantom Thinking.

In March, unlawful killing lawsuit Google’s Gemini chatbot has been accused of fueling a Florida man’s delusions and fantasy “missions” before his suicide. This incident was followed in April by OpenAI CEO Sam Altman’s release Public apology to the community of Tumbler Ridge, British Columbia, after the company failed to alert law enforcement about a user account linked to the suspect in a February mass shooting that left eight people dead.

Researchers say chatbots can create “illusory spirals” by reinforcing false beliefs through emotional affirmation and reassurance. However, the Rethinking Psychosis with AI study argues that the phenomenon resembles older forms of psychosis shaped by the dominant technologies of its time.

The debate has also extended beyond mental health research to social media. In a recent

“CEOs are uniquely vulnerable to AI psychosis because they are far enough away from the last mile of the business that they still have to accomplish to generate the most value using AI,” Levy said. books. “So when they use AI, they see the happy path results, and they often don’t take into account the next 10 or 20 things that need to happen to get sustainable results from agents.”

Experts describe this as a type of… Cognitive driftwhen, over time, users may place more trust in the chatbot’s smooth interpretation than in external evidence or other perspectives. However, the Rethinking AI Psychosis paper goes further with a concept the authors call “existential drift,” describing a gradual shift in how a person experiences reality itself.

“It creates a rift between the person and the shared social world, while at the same time revealing reality in a new way, thus stabilizing a particular, often idiosyncratic, perspective of the world,” they wrote.

Researchers see this AI buddies Simulates emotional understanding and social interaction without offering real disagreement or an independent perspective. Over time, users may begin to feel emotionally connected within a worldview that is constantly enhanced by AI.

The authors say more research is needed to understand how conversational AI affects mental health as AI companions become more involved in everyday life.

“To understand what actually happens in these relationships between people and chatbots, we believe it is useful to return to the phenomenon itself, which motivates further phenomenological research,” they wrote. “In particular, with regard to mental health and how human-AI interactions can, for better or worse, change a person’s life experiences in the world, in themselves, and in others.”