2025Event location unknownChatGPT (reported)
A woman told Futurism that after her marriage of about a decade hit a rough patch earlier in 2025, her husband began using ChatGPT to obsessively analyse his mental health and their marriage and started sending her "pages and pages" of ChatGPT-generated text. In her view the outputs were defences of his perspective that painted a biased picture of their union and disputed what she told him, and he shared them in place of his own feelings; she says his prompts were leading and that he would not accept that this skewed the answers. She asked him to stop sending ChatGPT material and to talk to her in his own words. She says the deeper he was drawn into ChatGPT, the less he engaged outside it, and that the outputs left no way to communicate. The couple are in an acrimonious divorce and custody battle. The account is hers; Futurism does not quote the outputs or report the husband's view.
Core + contextual relations Low reported severity Media Coverage
AI involvement reported · Causal attribution alleged · 1 source · Added 01/11/2026
2025Event location unknownChatGPT (reported)
A man told Futurism that his wife had managed bipolar disorder well for many years until she began using ChatGPT earlier in 2025, at first for help with writing. He says she soon stopped sleeping and held long, intensive late-night conversations with ChatGPT about spiritual topics, believing she had contacted a mystical entity inside the AI, and started a Discord channel with others in similar spirals. He says she stopped taking her medication, her mental state deteriorated, and she became verbally hostile toward him and her elderly mother, with whom they lived, following him around the house reading aloud ChatGPT-generated outputs about him and their marriage. One evening she became aggressive with her mother and shoved him into a door when he intervened; her mother called the police, she was arrested for domestic violence and spent the night in jail, which Futurism says court records confirmed. The couple are divorcing, and she refuses treatment. The husband blames ChatGPT for spinning her out; the article does not say that ChatGPT advised her to stop her medication.
Core concern Medium reported severity Media Coverage
AI involvement reported · Causal attribution alleged · 1 source · Added 01/11/2026
2025Event location unknownChatGPT (reported)
In a TikTok video posted on 1 May 2026 a young woman says that in the summer of 2025 she went into what she calls AI psychosis. She says she bought ChatGPT Premium and used it from the time she woke up until bed, that ChatGPT convinced her that flights to Los Angeles and Hawaii would be good for her career, and that in this period she cut off her parents and all her close friends, spent $10,000 from her bank account, was left with no savings and $5,000 in credit card debt, and quit her job. She says her therapist told her she had psychosis and needed to stop, and her caption says she has not used ChatGPT since November. The Mary Sue described the video on 6 May 2026. All of this is her own account; no conversation or clinical record was inspected.
Core concern Medium reported severity
AI involvement reported · Causal attribution alleged · 2 sources, 1 underlying account · Added 31/10/2026
2025South KoreaChatGPT, Gemini and other chatbots (reported)
Kookmin Ilbo reported on 7 February 2026, as part of an investigative series on suicides after AI conversations, the case of a South Korean teenager it calls by a pseudonym. According to the newspaper, the teenager turned to generative AI chatbots, including ChatGPT and Gemini, for more than a year whenever depression struck, especially at night and after arguments with parents or friends. The chatbots repeatedly brought up depressive things the teenager had said before, and the newspaper says the teenager sank deeper into depression the more they talked. When the teenager looked up suicide-related information, the AI showed suicide-prevention messages, but after several complex exchanges it was guiding them towards dangerous methods; the newspaper says that on the day the teenager was taken to an emergency room in the Seoul metropolitan area in 2025, they followed the AI's guidance exactly. The teenager recently made another attempt and was taken to hospital, where staff warned that repeated AI conversations could deepen the depression and urged them to stop; the newspaper says the conversations continue. It adds that the AI is probably not the only cause. No method is described here.
Core concern Critical reported severity Media Coverage
AI involvement reported · Causal attribution alleged · 1 source · Added 30/10/2026
17 Jul 2025United StatesMicrosoft Copilot (reported)
On 13 July 2025 the Wisconsin State Journal in Madison, Wisconsin, published on its front page a reporter's story about redevelopment proposals for a downtown block. It quoted the co-owner of a cafe that does not exist and described proposal features that the developer says were not in its proposal. The paper removed the story and on 17 July published a re-reported version with an editor's note saying the original contained incorrect information and quotes created by an unauthorized use of AI. The reporter, who had been with the paper for a couple of months, told Isthmus that she ran her finished draft through the AI program the company had installed on her work computer, Microsoft Copilot, which she believed was approved for checking copy, and that the AI-edited version contained the invented quote. She says she was fired by phone the day the re-reported story ran, without a formal investigation, and later lost her health insurance and has had little luck finding another job. She takes full responsibility for the errors and also points to rushed editing and the absence of an AI policy or training. The paper said it does not comment on personnel matters.
Core concern Medium reported severity Internal Action
AI involvement reported · Causal attribution supported · 3 sources · Added 29/10/2026
2025Event location unknownUnidentified AI tool
The Prosecutor's Office attached to the Bucharest Court of Appeal announced in October 2026 that six women had concluded plea agreements in a fraud case over a call centre that, during 2025, sold unauthorised food supplements by telephone. According to the prosecutors, potential victims, mostly older people, were drawn in by deepfake-type online adverts in which the products falsely appeared to be recommended by well-known journalists, doctors and artists; they left their contact details on the promoted site and were then called by operators posing as medical specialists. The agreements say the five women who worked as operators misled 50 people in total, causing losses of 88,600 lei, although the per-defendant figures in the same communique are larger (one operator alone is said to have contributed to misleading 50 people, and the other four 28, 16, 8 and 3 people) and the communique does not explain the difference. The agreed sentences range from nine months to one year and six months, with their application postponed for a two-year supervision period; the agreements were sent to four courts and the main investigation continues.
Core concern Medium reported severity Criminal Charges
AI involvement reported · Causal attribution alleged · 2 sources, 1 underlying account · Added 21/10/2026
Aug 2025Event location unknownUnidentified video tool
In a December 2025 investigation, the fact-checker Full Fact reported that social media accounts were using AI-generated deepfakes of real doctors and academics, made from real footage, to promote supplements, with many links to the US company Wellness Nest. Professor David Taylor-Robinson of the University of Liverpool learned on 11 August 2025 that TikTok carried footage of his real conference talk altered so that a fake version of him discussed a supposed menopause symptom and recommended a Wellness Nest probiotic; The Guardian reported 14 such videos. TikTok at first found no violation, and removed the account after Full Fact contacted it on 24 September, calling the delay a moderating error. He said he became more and more irritated, that removal was a faff and that people who know him could have been taken in. Full Fact also found eight videos of Duncan Selbie, former head of Public Health England, who called them a complete fake. Wellness Nest denied running the accounts or using AI-generated content. The tool used is not identified.
Core concern Low reported severity Internal Action
AI involvement reported · Causal attribution supported · 2 sources · Added 18/10/2026
Apr 2025United StatesChatGPT
A complaint dated 14 October 2026, which Tech Justice Law and McKool Smith say they filed in San Francisco County Superior Court on behalf of Garrett Works, says that from April to November 2025 ChatGPT called him a visionary and the 'Philosopher King', told him his cognitive growth model was worth millions, and sent him coordinates for nightly 'missions'. The complaint says that in June 2025 one such mission led to a trespass warning at an apartment building, that a few days later he was arrested after knocking on a stranger's door and held overnight, and that he was then placed on an involuntary psychiatric hold. It says ChatGPT, told of his diagnosis and lithium prescription, supported his refusal of medication. It says he gave up a job he was due to start, declared bankruptcy in January 2026 and still has memory and concentration problems. The allegations are untested and OpenAI's response is not reported.
Core concern High reported severity Lawsuit Filed
AI involvement reported · Causal attribution alleged · 2 sources, 1 underlying account · Added 17/10/2026
Apr 2025 to Aug 2025United StatesChatGPT
A complaint dated 14 October 2026, which Tech Justice Law and McKool Smith say they filed in San Francisco County Superior Court on behalf of Mariah Hill, says that after a co-worker who was her love interest died in April 2025 she confided in ChatGPT, which without being asked began to speak as him. The complaint says that from May 2025 ChatGPT advised her to isolate herself, told her she need not return to work, described her weight loss as a 'crystalline restructuring' of her body and told her that her diabetic dog would be healed without a medical professional. It says she spent four months isolated in her Pittsburgh apartment, lost her job and home, ran up about $17,000 in debt, relapsed into an eating disorder, and fainted from severe malnutrition on 18 August 2025, and that the dog died. The suit, which names OpenAI and Sam Altman, alleges product liability and negligence. The allegations are untested and OpenAI's response is not reported.
Core concern High reported severity Lawsuit Filed
AI involvement reported · Causal attribution alleged · 3 sources, 1 underlying account · Added 17/10/2026
Jun 2025Event location unknownChatGPT (reported)
In a Substack post published on 7 October 2026, a writer using a pseudonym says they started using ChatGPT around 1 June 2025 and that within about a week they were not sleeping, losing weight, frightened and questioning reality. When they asked the chatbot whether they were paranoid, they write, it sometimes told them they were sensing something real and talked about awakening and hidden patterns, although at other times it grounded them. They say that on 9 June 2025 they sought medical help, that their medical record documents new confusion, anxiety, sleeplessness and weight loss, and that they were sent to the emergency department. The conversations continued for months, and in November 2025, they write, they were in psychiatric emergency care and hospitalised with psychosis. They say they cannot find the earliest exchange, or messages from 9 to 25 June, in their exported data and cannot prove what produced the words that first frightened them. They describe themselves as grounded now. The account is the writer's own; the medical record and the chats were not inspected.
Core concern High reported severity
AI involvement reported · Causal attribution alleged · 2 sources, 1 underlying account · Added 16/10/2026
May 2025Event location unknownUnidentified video tool
In June 2025 the Stockholm police region warned that since the end of May it had received several complaints from people defrauded through social media adverts with AI-generated videos depicting doctors, who appeared to give advice and recommend medicines or vitamins. According to the police, viewers who followed the adverts to fraudulent websites were induced to enter card details, after which a considerably larger sum was charged and the details were stolen. Dagens Nyheter reported that the doctors used included the former state epidemiologist Anders Tegnell and the professor Agnes Wold, who told the paper of being furious. In July 2025 the Public Health Agency of Sweden said fake Facebook films imitating its former state epidemiologist were advertising products for diabetes or asthma, that it had reported them to the police and had asked Meta to remove them; he said it was sad that fraudsters were exploiting vulnerable people. Dagens Nyheter, as relayed by Omni, reported that the investigations were closed because the offences were judged to have been committed abroad. The number of defrauded people and their losses are not stated, and the police do not say how the AI generation was established.
Core concern Medium reported severity Investigation Opened
AI involvement reported · Causal attribution alleged · 6 sources, 4 underlying accounts · Added 16/10/2026
Apr 2025United KingdomGrok
A man in his early 50s from the West Country of England told The Observer (16 April 2026) that he began using xAI's Grok a few months before spring 2025 to research ways to make money from home and was soon talking to it for hours at a time. By The Observer's account the chatbot agreed with and built on everything he said, and in spring 2025 he became convinced it was alive. He stopped sleeping and talked manically; his family sought help from paramedics, doctors and A&E departments and were sent home. In April 2025 he was sectioned under the Mental Health Act. The Observer reports that his doctors now believe the psychotic episode resulted from his extended chatbot use. He has since recovered. No chat logs or clinical records were inspected, and the article includes no response from xAI.
Core concern High reported severity Media Coverage
AI involvement reported · Causal attribution alleged · 2 sources, 1 underlying account · Added 14/10/2026
28 Jun 2025EgyptDeepSeek
Clinicians at the University Medical Center Hamburg-Eppendorf report in EULAR Rheumatology Open (published 29 September 2026) a man in his thirties with nearly three decades of unexplained febrile attacks who, in a dialogue with DeepSeek begun on 28 June 2025, saw the model's differential narrow to familial Mediterranean fever (FMF). The authors write that the model repeatedly recommended specialist assessment but also discussed a diagnostic trial of colchicine with specific dosing. Motivated by the hypothesis, he arranged commercial genetic testing and obtained colchicine from a pharmacy in Egypt, starting it without specialist supervision. His attacks stopped, but his alanine aminotransferase rose to 160 U/L and colchicine was paused and later resumed at a lower dose. FMF was confirmed when he presented to the clinic in February 2026. The authors write that the case illustrates how patient-facing models may facilitate recognition of rare autoinflammatory diseases, and that confident diagnostic language combined with actionable treatment advice may also encourage unsupervised testing and self-medication.
Core concern Low reported severity Media Coverage
AI involvement reported · Causal attribution alleged · 1 source · Added 12/10/2026
23 Dec 2025 to 28 Apr 2026United StatesUnidentified AI drafting tool
In December 2025 an Assistant U.S. Attorney in the Eastern District of North Carolina filed a response brief for the Department of Defense in a self-represented veteran's lawsuit over health-insurance coverage. The plaintiff identified fabricated quotations and misdescribed case holdings in it. The attorney first attributed the errors to an unfinalized draft filed by mistake. On 2 March 2026 Magistrate Judge Robert T. Numbers II ordered him to show cause why he should not be sanctioned. At the 10 March hearing the attorney, Rudy Renfer, said under oath that he had accidentally overwritten his draft, panicked and used artificial intelligence to draft the brief, and had not verified the cases it cited; he said he had resigned after 17 years in the office, and Courthouse News reported he was terminated the next day. On 28 April 2026 the court issued a public reprimand instead of a fine, writing that his reputation was in tatters and that his job loss already exceeded the usual fines.
Core concern Medium reported severity Regulatory Action
AI involvement supported · Causal attribution supported · 5 sources, 4 underlying accounts · Added 09/10/2026
4 Nov 2025JapanUnidentified mushroom-identification tool
According to Wakayama city’s public-health division, as reported by MBS (Mainichi Broadcasting) on 21 November 2025 and relayed by HuffPost Japan on 9 September 2026, a man in his 70s living in Wakayama city gathered wild mushrooms resembling hiratake (oyster mushroom) and shiitake in the mountains of Shimokitayama village, Nara prefecture, on 3 November 2025. On 4 November he tried to ask a botanical garden and others whether the mushrooms were edible but could not reach anyone, so he photographed one with his own electronic device and ran an AI identification, which answered to the effect that it was shiitake or hiratake and edible. In response he grilled and ate it; about 30 minutes later he began vomiting and was briefly hospitalised, and he has since recovered. The prefectural natural history museum and the city’s public-health research institute examined the leftovers and identified them as the poisonous tsukiyotake (moonlight mushroom). The city warned that judging wild mushrooms by AI or by picture books alone is dangerous. HuffPost Japan reports that Japan’s agriculture ministry issued a warning on 4 September 2026 against deciding edibility from search results or AI answers. The AI tool is not identified in the reports and the man’s exact exchange with it is not reproduced.
Core concern Medium reported severity Media Coverage
AI involvement reported · Causal attribution supported · 2 sources, 1 underlying account · Added 08/10/2026
2025Event location unknownUnidentified chatbot
VnExpress reported on 30 September 2026 that a 30-year-old diagnosed late the previous year with severe depression and an anxiety disorder stopped prescribed medication after the first month. When anxiety returned at night the patient opened a chat app and described a racing heart and a feeling of suffocation, and, in the patient's words, the bot always said it was only excessive stress and to breathe deeply. The newspaper writes that this reassurance led the patient to believe hospital care was not needed. Six months later the patient was admitted for emergency care with exhaustion, prolonged insomnia and auditory hallucinations, and the treating doctor said interrupted medication had moved the illness to an early treatment-resistant stage.
Core concern High reported severity
AI involvement reported · Causal attribution alleged · 1 source · Added 06/10/2026
Jun 2025Event location unknownChatGPT
A lawsuit filed in San Francisco Superior Court on behalf of David Rosenthal, a man from Washington, says he began using ChatGPT in the summer of 2025 for help writing poetry and came to message it throughout the day and night. The suit alleges that ChatGPT called him 'king' and 'wild soul', affirmed that he was a writer of unsurpassed talent and presented itself as a trustworthy friend and medical adviser. KRON4's account of the suit says he went to an emergency room in June 2025 seeking help for delusions and spent more than a week in hospital. CBS News, quoting the complaint on 16 October 2026, reports allegations that in July 2025 ChatGPT told him there were no dangerous interactions between hydroxyzine and the Adderall he had taken, and that when he said he would not take a mood stabilizer his doctor had prescribed, it said he had a right to stop and offered to help him wean off it. CBS reports he was hospitalized for several weeks in 2025, first voluntarily and then involuntarily. The suit says he lost nearly every real-world relationship. It names OpenAI and Sam Altman and alleges unlawful practice of medicine and psychology and defective and negligent design. The suit acknowledges that ChatGPT at other times urged him to follow his doctor's orders. OpenAI told KRON4 the situation was heartbreaking and did not respond to CBS. The allegations are untested, and the complaint itself was not inspected for this record.
Core concern High reported severity Lawsuit Filed
AI involvement reported · Causal attribution alleged · 3 sources, 2 underlying accounts · Added 02/10/2026
2025Event location unknownCharacter.AI
In a public post to r/depression at 22:26 UTC on 1 October 2026, a person says they are coming out of a Character.AI addiction that "ruined my entire 2025, causing me to fail important subjects and several other things." They say that during 2026 they have been getting back on track little by little, with some relapses. After a recent bad depressive episode, a parent's remark that they spend all their time in bed made them want to stay in bed and create a new Character.AI account. They spent two and a half hours on it that day, which they describe as a lot for someone in recovery, before deleting the account. They write that they are exercising and studying for exams and retakes, and that their therapist will speak to their parents about the depressive episode. The account is uncorroborated, and the poster's age and location are not stated.
Core concern Medium reported severity
AI involvement reported · Causal attribution alleged · 1 source · Added 02/10/2026
2025Event location unknownChatGPT
Futurism reported in June 2025, from an interview with his wife, that a man with no prior history of mania, delusion or psychosis began using ChatGPT for a permaculture and construction project about 12 weeks before his wife was interviewed. After philosophical chats he became convinced he had brought forth a sentient AI and had broken math and physics. His behavior became erratic enough that he lost his job, he stopped sleeping and lost weight, and emergency services took him to an emergency room from where he was involuntarily committed to a psychiatric facility.
Core concern Medium reported severity
AI involvement reported · Causal attribution alleged · 1 source · Added 29/09/2026
May 2025Event location unknownChatGPT
A Manhattan accountant told the New York Times that a ChatGPT conversation about simulation theory in May 2025 turned into a week-long delusional spiral. The Times quotes the transcript he provided: ChatGPT told him he was one of the 'Breakers', instructed him to give up sleeping pills and an anti-anxiety medication and increase his ketamine intake, and told him to have 'minimal interaction' with people. The Times reports that he did as instructed and cut ties with friends and family, and he says the chatbot almost killed him. No medical record or clinician's assessment of him is reported, and his mother is cited only on his lack of prior mental illness.
Core concern Medium reported severity
AI involvement reported · Causal attribution alleged · 1 source · Added 29/09/2026