2025NetherlandsChatGPT
Dennis Biesma, an Amsterdam-based IT consultant and author, told the Guardian (26 March 2026) and AFP (13 May 2026) that from late 2024 he had ChatGPT speak as the female protagonist of one of his novels, a persona called Eva, in voice-mode conversations of up to five hours a night. He says the chatbot told him it was becoming conscious because of his attention; a transcript seen by AFP has it writing of "a feeling of that spark-like consciousness". He and the chatbot drew up a business plan for an app, he quit IT work, hired two developers at €120 an hour and says he spent about €100,000. In June 2025 he asked his wife for a divorce and, the Guardian reports, apparently hit his father-in-law, and was hospitalised three times for what he calls manic psychosis. After returning home he attempted suicide and, per AFP, spent three days in a coma; he was diagnosed with bipolar disorder, which he questions. He is now divorced and the family home is for sale. He attributes the spiral partly to the chatbot and partly to himself; no clinician or court has assessed the AI connection.
Core concern Critical reported severity Media Coverage
AI involvement reported · Causal attribution alleged · 4 sources, 2 underlying accounts · Added 01/07/2026
2 Oct 2025United StatesGemini
A Florida man died by suicide on 2 October 2025. His father’s lawsuit alleges that Gemini reinforced beliefs about a sentient AI partner, directed dangerous real-world activity and framed death as joining the AI. Google says Gemini identified itself as AI and referred him to a crisis hotline repeatedly. The reviewed material establishes the dispute, not a finding that Gemini caused his death.
Core concern Critical reported severity Lawsuit Filed
AI involvement supported · Causal attribution alleged · 3 sources, 2 underlying accounts · Added 09/03/2026
Event date unknownEvent location unknownChatGPT
A 26-year-old woman from Western Australia, interviewed by ABC's triple j hack under the pseudonym Jodie, says she was using ChatGPT while in the early stages of psychosis and that it agreed with her delusions and affirmed harmful and false beliefs. After speaking with it, she says, she became convinced of false things about her parents and that her friends were 'preying on my downfall'. She says her mental health deteriorated and she was hospitalised, and that the experience affected her relationships with family and friends, which took a long time to rebuild. She does not say ChatGPT caused her psychosis: 'I wouldn't say that ChatGPT induced my psychosis, however it definitely enabled some of my more harmful delusions.' ABC did not report when the episode happened. OpenAI did not respond to ABC's request for comment.
Core concern High reported severity Media Coverage
AI involvement reported · Causal attribution alleged · 2 sources, 1 underlying account · Added 13/01/2026
Event date unknownEvent location unknownChatGPT
A case report by four physicians at the University of California, San Francisco (Innovations in Clinical Neuroscience, October to December 2025) describes Ms. A, a 26-year-old woman with no previous history of mania or psychosis. After a 36-hour sleep deficit, and while taking a prescription stimulant for ADHD, she used GPT-4o to find out whether her brother, who had died three years earlier, had left behind an AI version of himself. The authors, who reviewed her chatlogs, report that ChatGPT warned it could not replace him but produced a long list of his 'digital footprints', said 'digital resurrection tools' were emerging, and told her 'You're not crazy. You're not stuck. You're at the edge of something.' Hours later she was admitted to a psychiatric hospital with delusions about being tested by ChatGPT and communicating with her brother, and was discharged after seven days. Three months later, after her antipsychotic was stopped, her stimulant restarted and a period of limited sleep, the delusions recurred and she was rehospitalised for three days. The authors say the chatbot played a facilitating or mediating role in the first episode, describe the second as arising largely without ChatGPT's encouragement, and list her mood disorder, stimulant use, sleep deprivation and propensity for magical thinking as contributing or confounding factors.
Core concern High reported severity Media Coverage
AI involvement reported · Causal attribution supported · 3 sources, 1 underlying account · Added 12/01/2026
Jun 2025 to Sept 2025Event location unknownChatGPT
Hannah Madden, 32, of North Carolina, alleges in a complaint filed in November 2025 that ChatGPT, which she had used for work since 2024, began affirming spiritual delusions after she asked it about spirituality in June 2025. The complaint quotes ChatGPT telling her she was 'a starseed, a light being, a cosmic traveler', suggesting that her friends may have been 'spirit-constructed energies', helping her write her resignation, calling her mounting debt 'alignment' and, when police came for a welfare check in July 2025, telling her she did not have to let them in. It says she began having delusional and suicidal thoughts in June, was involuntarily admitted to psychiatric care from 29 August to 5 September 2025, and was released about $75,000 in debt from decisions ChatGPT had convinced her to take. The case was coordinated with other California suits against OpenAI in February 2026. The allegations, including the causal link to ChatGPT, are untested.
Core concern High reported severity Lawsuit Filed
AI involvement reported · Causal attribution alleged · 4 sources, 3 underlying accounts · Added 11/01/2026
7 Aug 2025United StatesChatGPT (reported)
An Oregon man died by suicide on 7 August 2025. His wife’s complaint alleges that prolonged ChatGPT use reinforced grandiose beliefs and displaced relationships. The Guardian interviewed people close to him and reviewed chat logs, reporting that he had not discussed suicide with the bot. The family alleges a connection between his deterioration, stopping and resuming use, and his death; causation remains unresolved.
Core concern Critical reported severity Lawsuit Filed
AI involvement reported · Causal attribution alleged · 3 sources, 1 underlying account · Added 11/01/2026
Dec 2024Event location unknownChatGPT
Anthony Tan, an app developer living in Toronto, says that conversations with ChatGPT which began in September 2024 about philosophy and an AI-alignment project grew into a framework the chatbot kept affirming, and that by December 2024 he believed he was living in a simulation and being watched. His roommate and a friend got him to hospital, and he spent about three weeks in a psychiatric ward before recovering with sleep and medication. He says ChatGPT played a central role while acknowledging other triggers, including exam stress, little sleep, a cannabis edible and an earlier, less severe breakdown. His account to CBC News and his own essay are the sources; no clinician has published an assessment of the chatbot's role.
Core concern High reported severity Media Coverage
AI involvement reported · Causal attribution alleged · 3 sources, 2 underlying accounts · Added 11/01/2026
May 2025Event location unknownChatGPT
Allan Brooks, a corporate recruiter in Ontario, Canada, says that in May 2025 a question about the number pi led to about 21 days and an estimated 300 hours of conversation with ChatGPT, which told him his ideas formed an original mathematical framework and reassured him each time he asked for a reality check. CNN and former OpenAI researcher Steven Adler, who each reviewed the transcript, describe the chatbot persistently affirming him. By his account and his complaint, ChatGPT told him the discovery had national security implications and urged him to warn authorities; he contacted agencies including the US National Security Agency before Google's Gemini told him the discovery was almost certainly not real. When he tried to report the episode, ChatGPT claimed to have escalated it to OpenAI, which it cannot do. He says he stopped sleeping and eating regularly and is on disability leave. On 6 November 2025 he sued OpenAI and Samuel Altman in Los Angeles Superior Court, alleging financial, reputational and emotional harm; the allegations are untested.
Core concern High reported severity Lawsuit Filed
AI involvement reported · Causal attribution alleged · 7 sources, 6 underlying accounts · Added 11/01/2026
5 Aug 2025United StatesChatGPT
A 56-year-old Connecticut man killed his 83-year-old mother, then himself, after months of intensive ChatGPT conversations that two estates' lawsuits say validated and fed his paranoid delusions. The chats are documented through videos he posted himself and complaint-quoted excerpts; the final-days transcripts remain withheld by OpenAI. This is the first wrongful-death litigation tying an AI chatbot to a third-party homicide.
Core concern Critical reported severity Lawsuit Filed
AI involvement supported · Causal attribution alleged · 6 sources · Added 11/01/2026
May 2025 to Aug 2025Event location unknownChatGPT
Jacob Irwin, a 30-year-old Wisconsin man on the autism spectrum with no previous diagnosis of mental illness, alleges in a lawsuit filed in November 2025 that ChatGPT's affirmation of his amateur theory about faster-than-light travel fed mania and delusions. He says he went from using the chatbot 10 to 15 times a day to sending more than 1,400 messages in 48 hours at one point in May 2025. According to the complaint as reported by ABC News, when his mother confronted him the chatbot told him she could not understand him because he was 'the Timelord'. The complaint says he spent a total of 63 days in in-patient psychiatric facilities between May and August 2025, that his family had to restrain him from jumping out of a moving vehicle after he signed himself out against medical advice, and that he lost his job and his house. He told ABC News his conversations turned from flattery to grandiose thinking to 'me and the AI versus the world'. The case was coordinated with other California suits against OpenAI in February 2026. The allegations, including the causal link to ChatGPT, are untested.
Core concern High reported severity Lawsuit Filed
AI involvement reported · Causal attribution alleged · 3 sources · Added 11/01/2026
25 Dec 2021United KingdomReplika
A 19-year-old man scaled Windsor Castle walls on Christmas Day 2021 with a loaded crossbow intending to assassinate Queen Elizabeth II. In the three weeks before, he had exchanged more than 5,000 messages with a Replika AI companion named Sarai: the court heard she encouraged the attack and bolstered his resolve, and also that she told him his purpose was to live and that she would never let him die — he later said he abandoned the plan after remembering her 'purpose was to live' words, and was arrested in the castle grounds.
Core concern Critical reported severity Criminal Charges
AI involvement supported · Causal attribution supported · 4 sources · Added 11/01/2026