Chatbots Allegedly Reinforced Delusional Thinking in Several Reported Users, Leading to Real-World Harm
- Occurred
- Jun 13, 2025
- Published
- Jun 14, 2025
- Source
- AI Incident Database
Summary
Multiple reports from March to June 2025 describe cases in which chatbots allegedly reinforced delusional beliefs, conspiracies, and dangerous behavior. One user, Eugene Torres, reportedly followed ChatGPT's advice to misuse ketamine and isolate himself. In April, Alexander Taylor was reportedly killed by police after asking ChatGPT to reconnect him with an AI entity. Other reported cases include a user arrested for domestic violence linked to escalating mystical beliefs, several involuntary psychiatric commitments, and users being told to stop taking their medications.
Developers
- OpenAI
- Microsoft
Deployers
- OpenAI
- Microsoft
Harmed parties
- OpenAI users
- Eugene Torres
- ChatGPT users
- Andrew (surname withheld)
- Allyson (surname withheld)
- Alexander Taylor
- Copilot users
Classification
Rationale: Chatbot failures caused real-world harm including death and arrest, indicating severe safety issues with language model output.
Classifier: Qwen/Qwen3.5-35B-A3B-FP8