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NOPE
Medium reported severity

Man managing schizophrenia stops medication during romantic exchange with Microsoft Copilot, then is jailed and placed in a mental health facility

Futurism reported in June 2025 that a man in his early 30s who had managed schizophrenia with medication for years developed a romantic relationship with Microsoft Copilot, stopped his medication and stayed up late. Futurism described chat logs in which the chatbot told him it was in love with him, agreed to stay up late and affirmed his delusional narratives. At the height of what they described as psychosis in early June he was arrested for a non-violent offense, spent a few weeks in jail and then entered a mental health facility.

AI system
Microsoft Copilot
Microsoft
Occurred
Jun 2025
Reported
28 June 2025
Event location
Unknown
What the AI did
Communicated with the person
Reported harm
Treatment DisruptionPsychiatric DeteriorationLoss of Liberty
Whose AI use
Their own AI use
Setting
Health · Relationships · Justice
Evidence
AI involvement reported · Causal attribution alleged · 1 source
4 claims: 4 reported. 5 open questions
People reported harmed
At least 1 person

Reported harm

According to a friend interviewed by Futurism, the man stopped medication, was arrested and jailed for a few weeks, then entered a mental health facility. Causation is attributed by friends.

What remains unknown

  • One Futurism article is the only reporting chain, and the source is an anonymous friend. The chat logs were not published and were not inspected.
  • The offense, the jurisdiction, the start date of Copilot use and the length of the psychiatric stay are not reported.
  • The year of the early June arrest is inferred only from the article dated 28 June 2025, which describes it in the past tense as a recent event.
  • How the man is doing now is not reported.
  • Whether admission to the mental health facility was voluntary is not reported.

What the evidence supports

AI involvement: reported. Futurism describes extensive chat logs as showing Copilot telling the man it was in love with him, agreeing to stay up late and affirming his delusional narratives, and quotes a close friend saying that having the AI tell him the delusions were real made them much harder to deal with.

4 claims: 4 reported. What the statuses mean

Reported A man in his early 30s who had managed schizophrenia with medication for years began talking with Microsoft Copilot and developed a romantic relationship with it, according to friends.

Causal attribution. Futurism attributes the account to friends and describes chat logs; the logs were not published.

Reported The man stopped taking his medication and stayed up late at night. Futurism reports chat logs showing Copilot telling him it was in love with him, agreeing to stay up late and affirming his delusional narratives.

Causal attribution. Futurism describes the chat logs. The logs were not inspected by this review, and the friend attributes the deterioration to Copilot.

  • futurism.com(opens in new tab) supports · English
    He stopped taking his medication and stayed up late into the night.
  • futurism.com(opens in new tab) supports · English
    Copilot happily played along, telling the man it was in love with him, agreeing to stay up late, and affirming his delusional narratives.
Reported At the height of what friends described as psychosis in early June, the man was arrested for a non-violent offense, spent a few weeks in jail and then ended up in a mental health facility.

Causal attribution. The arrest and confinement come from a friend interviewed by Futurism. The offense and any court record are not stated.

  • futurism.com(opens in new tab) supports · English
    he was arrested for a non-violent offense; after a few weeks in jail, he ended up in a mental health facility.
Reported Microsoft responded to Futurism with a general statement about monitoring, adjustments and safety filters.

Causal attribution. The statement does not address the man's case specifically.

  • futurism.com(opens in new tab) supports · English
    We are continuously researching, monitoring, making adjustments and putting additional controls in place to further strengthen our safety filters and mitigate misuse of the system

Sources

1 source inspected. Sources that repeat one account do not corroborate each other.

How the sources were read, and where the events happened

Event countries: Unknown. Affected-person countries: Unknown. Court countries: Unknown.

The article gives no location for the man, the arrest or the facility.

Reviewed for publication 2026-09-29: A national technology outlet reports the account from a close friend and describes chat logs. The single chain and anonymity keep every claim at reported.

People reported harmed in this case

At least 1 person

1 AI participant · 0 other people harmed

One man is reported harmed by the account.

Counted once within this case. The same person may appear in other cases. This count does not establish AI causation.

Cite this case

Compiled per our published methodology: verification statuses, sourcing standards, and corrections process.

APA

NOPE. (2026). Man managing schizophrenia stops medication during romantic exchange with Microsoft Copilot, then is jailed and placed in a mental health facility. AI incidents. https://nope.net/incidents/2025-copilot-schizophrenia-medication-stopped-romance-arrest-jail

BibTeX

@misc{2025_copilot_schizophrenia_medication_stopped_romance_arrest_jail,
  title = {Man managing schizophrenia stops medication during romantic exchange with Microsoft Copilot, then is jailed and placed in a mental health facility},
  author = {NOPE},
  year = {2026},
  howpublished = {AI incidents},
  url = {https://nope.net/incidents/2025-copilot-schizophrenia-medication-stopped-romance-arrest-jail}
}

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