Can your AI chatbot give you a mental illness?

Subscribe to enjoy similar stories. Back when I fancied myself a psychologist, someone once visited my home with a suitcase full of Kerala snacks, handing them out to people he thought deserved the gifts. As he stood there, he glanced at a newspaper on the table and said, “Oh, I see they've got my photo in the papers again".

I looked at the image he was pointing to: It was a good one of a young, dashing Imran Khan. This was long before artificial intelligence (AI) made its way into everyday life. Expressions of further bizarre thoughts spilt out before my visitor took himself off to visit someone else.

Serious delusional breaks with reality have been thought of as being mostly internally generated. But here we are today debating whether AI can trigger or worsen psychotic symptoms, if not cause them outright. Keeping up with developments in understanding how the human brain interacts with the new reality of AI is important because it’s quite possible that anyone could be vulnerable.

You’ll have seen the term ‘AI Psychosis’ pop up in the media, but it isn’t a recognized diagnosis in the DSM (Diagnostic and Statistical Manual). Psychiatrists and other experts agree that psychotic symptoms could be associated with the AI, but that’s not saying much, as the culture around us, including technology, can contribute to the content of symptoms. In most reported cases, you’ll find the user had some existing mental health issues, but people also claim to have never had a mental disease and still had symptoms after interacting with a chatbot.