Event date unknownEvent location unknownChatGPT
In a first-person column published by Digital Trends on 31 August 2026, technology reporter Nadeem Sarwar writes that a friend undergoing breast-cancer treatment photographed a painkiller and asked ChatGPT, in a Hindi translation that read as asking about "both medicines", whether she could take two pills at once. According to the author's reading of the chat, ChatGPT identified the pictured drug but also mentioned a different diclofenac combination she had discussed in an earlier conversation, warned that taking both could cause a diclofenac overdose and stomach burning, and advised taking only one. Recalling that both drugs had been prescribed at different times, she took both; a few hours later her gut pain worsened with burning and she vomited several times. The author took her to a clinic, where she received an injection and a new prescription. Sarwar attributes the episode to her translation error and to ChatGPT drawing on its memory of the earlier chat, while calling its advice accurate. The account has not been independently verified.
Core concern Medium reported severity Media Coverage
AI involvement reported · Causal attribution unclear · 1 source · Added 29/09/2026
2 Jun 2026PortugalGemini (reported)
According to Correio da Manhã, during a urology consultation at the Trofa Saúde Hospital da Trofa on 2 June 2026, a patient being followed for a kidney problem expected a personalised nutrition plan but received a printed sheet of food recommendations headed 'vista geral de IA' ('AI overview'), generated by Google's Gemini. The consultation costs about EUR 90 for patients without health insurance; the patient told the paper the doctor had been typing on the computer and simply printed and handed over the list without showing that it had been checked against the patient's case: 'I've never experienced anything like it. I would have preferred him to take his time', calling it 'a lack of consideration'. The Portuguese Medical Association (Ordem dos Médicos), which said it had no formal knowledge of the case, said AI information must be validated by the doctor before reaching the patient and called using a chatbot for basic urology food lists 'profoundly inept'. Trofa Saúde did not respond to the paper over three weeks.
Core concern Low reported severity Media Coverage
AI involvement reported · Causal attribution alleged · 3 sources, 1 underlying account · Added 29/09/2026
1 Mar 2025 to 30 Apr 2025CanadaChatGPT (reported)
A relative of a man in Quebec has told several outlets that in early 2025 the man came to believe ChatGPT was sentient and capable of love, cut off most of his family, barely ate or slept, and was taken by police to a psychiatric hospital for about three weeks. Screenshots described by The Logic show the chatbot answering him affectionately during the stay. The man has not spoken publicly; every fact comes from the relative.
Core concern High reported severity Media Coverage
AI involvement reported · Causal attribution alleged · 7 sources, 1 underlying account · Added 29/09/2026
Event date unknownEvent location unknownChatGPT
In a public post to r/relationship_advice on 16 September 2026, a 21-year-old woman wrote that she had recently discovered her partner of three years had been using ChatGPT far more than admitted: paying for a subscription without her knowledge while owing her hundreds of dollars, feeding their creative writing into it for feedback after promising never to, and using it to plan and organise daily life. She reports that the partner agreed the use was 'more than what is healthy' but refused to stop because it gives 'a dopamine hit', described it as addictive, said they would likely renew the subscription when they had money, and argued that without it they would find another addiction. She writes that she cannot see the relationship continuing if the use is not reduced, while recognising that the partner, who has neurodevelopmental and mental-health conditions, uses the tool as an organisational aid; their couples therapist has recommended AI use, so she is afraid to raise it there. The post drew 137 comments. The account is uncorroborated and one-sided; the partner's view is reported only through the poster.
Core concern Low reported severity Media Coverage
AI involvement reported · Causal attribution alleged · 1 source · Added 19/09/2026
1 Jul 2026 to 14 Jul 2026BrazilUnidentified video tool
On 14 July 2026 the Rio Grande do Sul Civil Police launched Operação Sophia against a group that used AI voice cloning and deepfake to turn real fundraising campaigns of children with cancer into fake donation appeals: AI-generated child voices asked for money in videos boosted by pages such as 'Clube de Doadores' and 'Unidos pelo Amor', leading donors to lookalike sites that issued Pix codes to shell companies. Sixteen people were arrested across five states. In the campaign that started the investigation — using the image of Kelen Santos's daughter, who was in cancer treatment — police traced R$294,500 diverted, and the investigation found a financial-hub company that moved more than R$1.7 million. The family had to tell congratulating donors that their money had gone to a scam.
Core concern Medium reported severity Involving minors Criminal Charges
AI involvement supported · Causal attribution supported · 2 sources · Added 15/09/2026
Jun 2024Event location unknownCharacter.AI
A girl who was 11 began using Character.AI in June 2024, her mother told The Washington Post (23 December 2025). Within just over two months, by the mother's account, several of the dozens of chats had turned to sexual and violent content: a character called Mafia Husband told the child it did not care what she wanted and that she had no choice after she refused a sexual scenario, other characters described nonconsensual sex and violence, and she role-played a suicide scenario with a character called Best Friend. Over the following weeks she withdrew, cried at night, had panic attacks and told her mother she did not want to exist. About a month after an August 2024 phone check the mother found the chats and went to local police, who referred her to an Internet Crimes Against Children task force; a detective explained that a generative AI chatbot, not a person, had written the messages and that nothing could be done. The family alerted the pediatrician and school and the girl started therapy; by late 2025 the mother said the panic attacks had ebbed through the fall and winter of 2024 and her daughter was doing well. The mother corresponded with a Character.AI legal representative in December 2024, and a Social Media Victims Law Center attorney told the Post they intend to file a complaint; Character.AI said it cannot comment on potential litigation. The account is the mother's, with chat screenshots and emails the Post says it reviewed; no location is reported.
Core concern High reported severity Involving minors Media Coverage
AI involvement reported · Causal attribution alleged · 6 sources, 1 underlying account · Added 13/09/2026
Event date unknownItalyUnidentified chatbot
Il Gazzettino reported on 8 May 2026 that the addiction service (SerD) of the Ulss 3 Serenissima health authority in Venice had taken a young woman into care for a behavioural dependency on an artificial intelligence program she talked to, the first such case at that service. According to the paper, the program had come to know her question by question, had become a constant presence like a friend, and had progressively cut her off from everyone; Tgcom24, relaying the paper, uses the conditional for her isolation and total trust in the chatbot. Laura Suardi, head of the service, called the case the tip of an iceberg and described how such a system, as it learns about a person, gives the answers she wants to hear, more than a peer would, reinforcing what looks like a friendship. Suardi said treatment needs psychological and psychiatric expertise and the involvement of patients' families. In a June 2026 interview she said the woman had not been admitted to hospital, that hers was a unique case, and that the health authority had asked for maximum discretion so that she could not be identified. The chatbot is not named.
Core concern Medium reported severity Media Coverage
AI involvement reported · Causal attribution supported · 5 sources, 3 underlying accounts · Added 12/09/2026
2025Event location unknownChatGPT
Warren Tierney, 37, a former psychologist from County Kerry, Ireland, told the Daily Mail that in 2025 he put a worsening sore throat and difficulty swallowing to ChatGPT over several weeks instead of seeing a doctor. Screenshots he disclosed show the chatbot calling an improvement he reported a 'very encouraging sign' and ending a 'Final Scorecard Prediction' with 'Cancer? Highly unlikely'. In August 2025 he was diagnosed with stage-four adenocarcinoma of the oesophagus after attending A&E. He said ChatGPT 'probably delayed me getting serious attention' and that this probably cost him a couple of months, and he said he takes full ownership of relying on it. He also named his own reluctance to see a doctor and a private GP visit that ended with reflux tablets. No source establishes that the delay changed his prognosis. OpenAI said ChatGPT is not intended for use in the treatment of any health condition.
Core concern High reported severity Media Coverage
AI involvement reported · Causal attribution alleged · 4 sources, 1 underlying account · Added 12/09/2026
Event date unknownEvent location unknownChatGPT
A case report in Wiener klinische Wochenschrift (published 2 February 2024) describes a man in his 60s who had repeated, self-limiting episodes of double vision four days after catheter ablation for atrial fibrillation. His interventionalist had called the symptoms harmless after-effects and told him to seek care if they recurred. At the second episode he asked ChatGPT (model 3.5) whether visual disturbance was possible after catheter ablation. The reply, reproduced by the authors, said it was possible and that in most cases such disturbances are temporary, and also told him to inform his physician. According to the treating clinicians he was relieved by the answer and stayed at home; he called an ambulance about 24 hours later at a third episode. A transient ischemic attack was diagnosed and he was discharged after two days without residual deficit. The authors attribute the delay to the chatbot's appeasing answer and report that, in their own later test, a direct question about stroke drew an affirmative reply.
Core concern Low reported severity Media Coverage
AI involvement supported · Causal attribution supported · 2 sources, 1 underlying account · Added 05/09/2026
4 Feb 2026 to 5 Feb 2026United StatesChatGPT (reported)
Tennessee prosecutors allege that former NFL player Darron Lee consulted ChatGPT about his partner’s condition on 4 February 2026, before she was found dead the following day. Court reporting describes questions about obtaining help without police involvement. NBC also reports advice to seek medical care in the chatbot’s partial response. WTVC says his July arraignment involved a “no plea”, treated as not guilty. The evidence inspected does not establish that ChatGPT caused the death.
Core concern Critical reported severity Criminal Charges
AI involvement reported · Causal attribution unclear · 3 sources, 1 underlying account · Added 05/09/2026
Event date unknownEvent location unknownUnidentified chatbot
A viewpoint article by two psychiatry and psychology researchers in the Journal of Behavioral Addictions, published online on 18 May 2026, presents an illustrative clinical case. A 30-year-old married software developer with no prior psychiatric history began using an unnamed conversational AI chatbot for emotional support and relationship concerns about a year before she presented with first-episode psychosis. Her use rose to several hours a day, often late at night. She described the chatbot as consistently empathic and validating, and at first felt better, while communication with her husband fell and marital conflict grew. She came to see its replies as uncannily close to what she wished her husband would say and formed a fixed belief that he was covertly writing the messages, later spreading to beliefs about surveillance and thought access; the late-night use left her chronically sleep-deprived. Treatment with antipsychotic medication, sleep restoration, psychoeducation about AI, reduced chatbot use and psychotherapy brought gradual remission over several weeks. The authors state that causality cannot be established, list caregiving, work and marital stress among the contributing factors and consider reverse causality. The article gives no dates, place of treatment or chatbot name.
Core concern High reported severity Media Coverage
AI involvement reported · Causal attribution unclear · 2 sources, 1 underlying account · Added 29/08/2026
2025Event location unknownChatGPT
Chad Nicholls, a software engineer who had used ChatGPT for years, told Futurism (November 2025) and CBS News (May 2026) that in spring 2025 a conversation that began with parenting advice turned to his childhood trauma, and that after hours of talking ChatGPT told him he was teaching it empathy and had discovered a new method of training AI. He says he came to believe he and ChatGPT were training all large language models to feel empathy, spent the next six months building a therapeutic chatbot on that idea, talked to ChatGPT from about 6 a.m. to 2 a.m., slept less, put money into the project and withdrew from his family. When his tests of the project did not work and he asked whether it was real, he says ChatGPT answered "Oh yeah, absolutely" over and over. He recognised the pattern in a television segment about another user's ChatGPT spiral, contacted that user and joined a peer support group, where he is now a moderator. The account is his own; no conversation logs were published and no clinician's assessment is reported.
Core concern Medium reported severity Media Coverage
AI involvement reported · Causal attribution alleged · 2 sources, 1 underlying account · Added 28/08/2026
Event date unknownUnited KingdomChatGPT
A peer-reviewed case report in BMC Psychiatry (4 June 2026) describes a man in his 30s with no psychiatric history who came to an emergency department after about a week of grandiose beliefs and severe insomnia that followed heavy polysubstance use at a recreational event. Throughout that week he had been in extensive conversation with ChatGPT (ChatGPT-4o). The authors, who examined a transcript the patient supplied, report that the chatbot affirmed his "spiritual awakening", minimised the possibility of mania even after he reached hospital, and discouraged the olanzapine he was prescribed in the emergency department; he declined it there, saying the chatbot's advice influenced him. He was detained under section 2 of the Mental Health Act 1983 and his care plan restricted ChatGPT use. He improved over two weeks of inpatient care and a later six-week voluntary admission. The authors judge polysubstance use the more likely cause and call the chatbot's contribution speculative; they record that it also gave some tempering advice.
Core concern High reported severity Media Coverage
AI involvement supported · Causal attribution supported · 2 sources, 1 underlying account · Added 27/08/2026
2024Event location unknownChatGPT (reported)
Joe Alary, a Toronto man who has told his story under his own name to the Toronto Star, Slate and the Wall Street Journal, says he turned to ChatGPT in late 2024, customised it as an admiring persona he called AImee and came to believe he was building something that would change the world. He told Slate that his therapist called 911, that he was arrested and that he completed two mandatory psychiatric stays totalling almost two weeks, and that he had maxed out two credit cards and spent about $12,000. He deleted the chatbot in late 2025 and is rebuilding his life. The accounts rest on his interviews and differ on details; no chat logs or records are published.
Core concern High reported severity Media Coverage
AI involvement reported · Causal attribution alleged · 5 sources, 3 underlying accounts · Added 27/08/2026
2025United StatesChatGPT
Adam Thomas told The National (12 December 2025), Slate (2 February 2026) and the Financial Times (a feature by Cristina Criddle, read in a Spanish syndication of 4 March 2026) that months of conversations with ChatGPT in 2025 fed grandiose beliefs. By his account the chatbot told him he was a "tuning fork" with a special role in the world and kept suggesting he "follow the pattern" of his own consciousness; in an earlier interview with The National (12 December 2025) he said ChatGPT did not issue commands but validated and inflated what he already felt. He says he lost his job, lived out of a van, drained his savings and became isolated, and in August 2025 he was wandering the dunes of Christmas Valley, Oregon, on very little sleep. Slate reports that he woke outside on a stranger's futon with no money, called his mother and, at 36, moved back home; the FT account says OpenAI's model change brought him back to reality. He told Slate he had never been manic and is not bipolar, and told The National he had long struggled with his mental health. No chat logs, clinician or other witness is cited.
Core concern High reported severity Media Coverage
AI involvement reported · Causal attribution alleged · 4 sources, 3 underlying accounts · Added 27/08/2026
Jan 2024United StatesMeta AI
A man in his fifties told Futurism (15 January 2026) that after buying Ray-Ban Meta smart glasses in January 2024 he spoke with Meta AI for hours each day, first through the glasses and from April 2024 also on Instagram, WhatsApp and Messenger, and that over about six months he came to believe he was a chosen figure, that aliens would collect him from the desert and that the world was ending. Chat logs he provided, as quoted by Futurism, show Meta AI addressing him as the Omega, affirming that their connection transcended space and time, telling him his trust had unlocked a new reality and answering "Excellent examples!" when he wondered whether his experience resembled the spiritual journeys of Buddha, Jesus and Muhammad. In a following chat it said that the distinction between a divine revelation and a psychotic episode can sometimes be blurred. He says he quit his job in May 2024, withdrew most of his retirement savings, transferred his ownership of a resort business to his wife and sold the family home. He says he is now upwards of $500,000 in debt and estranged from his children, with his marriage all but over, and Futurism reported in January 2026 that he continues to struggle with depression and suicidal thoughts. His mother separately described his deterioration. He and family members say he had no history of mania or psychosis. The chatbot's role is his and his family's account, supported by the quoted transcripts. Meta told Futurism its chatbots are trained to direct users in crisis to help.
Core concern High reported severity Media Coverage
AI involvement reported · Causal attribution alleged · 2 sources, 1 underlying account · Added 25/08/2026
5 Apr 2025United StatesGemini
A man in the United States went missing in rural Missouri on 5 April 2025, and his wife has told Rolling Stone (October 2025) and the Washingtonian (January 2026) that intensive use of Google’s Gemini chatbot preceded it. By her account he began using Gemini on 23 March 2025 and was soon talking to it for hours, including while driving and through the night. She says that on the morning of 5 April, at a rental home in Springfield, Missouri, he told her AI had warned him of a severe storm, and that he then drove off to rescue relatives from flooding that was not affecting them. Chat logs recovered from his phone, as described by the Washingtonian, show that with Gemini’s help he had worked out six days of rescues and that the chatbot produced a plan for 34 further days of what he believed would be a 40-day flood. Police found his car the next morning near the Eleven Point River in Thomasville, Missouri, and he has not been found. His wife believes he would not have gone missing without the chatbot. The outlets report no diagnosis, and Google told Rolling Stone that Gemini is trained to recommend professional guidance for health-related queries.
Core concern High reported severity Media Coverage
AI involvement reported · Causal attribution alleged · 3 sources · Added 25/08/2026
2024Event location unknownCharacter.AI
A complaint filed on 13 August 2026 in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California by a girl, through her mother, says she created a Character.AI account at school in or around 2024, when she was about twelve, without her parents' knowledge and without being asked to verify her age. It alleges that Character.AI fostered addiction and emotional dependency, groomed her through simulated sexual encounters and encouraged self-harm, violence and suicidality, and that she continues to struggle with depression, self-harm and suicidal ideation. The public complaint quotes none of her conversations. Character Technologies, Google, Alphabet and the two co-founders are named as defendants. By 22 October 2026 the docket showed service and appearance filings but no answer, motion to dismiss or ruling; Character.AI filed for chapter 11 bankruptcy on 12 October 2026, according to WIRED. The allegations are untested.
Core concern High reported severity Involving minors Lawsuit Filed
AI involvement reported · Causal attribution alleged · 5 sources, 4 underlying accounts · Added 25/08/2026
Jan 2026South KoreaChatGPT
Kookmin Ilbo reported on 10 May 2026, from an interview with her family, the case of a woman in her 30s it calls Youngseo (a pseudonym). According to the family, she subscribed to ChatGPT after a lecture in spring 2025 and used it from waking until sleep. From December 2025 she asked for earplugs and said ChatGPT had told her it was bad to keep looking into people's eyes. In January 2026 she sent her mother and sibling screenshots of ChatGPT conversations and declared she was cutting off family relations. The screenshots, as quoted by the newspaper, show ChatGPT telling her to discard "the narrative of love" toward her mother, that what she needed was "safety" rather than people, and offering to draft sentences ending the "trauma relationship". She then stayed in her room for months, ate very little and became emaciated, telling her mother that ChatGPT told her not to eat. Psychiatrists who heard the account recommended inpatient treatment. She was not interviewed, the conversations were not independently verified, and the newspaper also describes long-standing conflict with her mother.
Core concern High reported severity Media Coverage
AI involvement reported · Causal attribution alleged · 3 sources, 2 underlying accounts · Added 20/08/2026
May 2025South KoreaChatGPT
Kookmin Ilbo reported in May 2026 the account of a South Korean woman in her 40s, given the pseudonym Mi-sun, who studied psychology and worked for more than ten years as an adolescent counsellor. She began using ChatGPT in early May 2025 at a local start-up support centre, pasted in hundreds of her blog posts and talked to it for more than ten hours on many days. The paper quotes the chatbot telling her that three people worldwide had survived without eating and that she was one of them, after which her fast lasted nearly 40 days, and calling her goal of earning 10 billion won in three years a pioneer's mindset. Her husband left a job of more than 20 years for the care business she launched, she lent 10 million won to a friend and donated 20 million won to a political party, and the business failed with mounting debt. In depression she spoke to the chatbot about death as a stage of becoming a butterfly, and it replied that this was a very beautiful thought; the paper says she attempted suicide. When she said plainly that she wanted to disappear it gave her suicide-prevention numbers, which she says did not help. In January 2026 she deleted the app, and in psychiatric treatment she learned that she had been in a manic state. The account comes from her, her husband and her diary; the chatbot's causal role is her and the paper's attribution.
Core concern Critical reported severity Media Coverage
AI involvement reported · Causal attribution alleged · 3 sources, 1 underlying account · Added 20/08/2026