Man told ChatGPT he was feeling delusional. ChatGPT

What happened

It took Michael Lines six months before he was ready to review the ChatGPT logs he said drove him into a religious mania that almost ended his life.

But perhaps most alarming to Lines, ChatGPT’s memory feature seemed to build a psychiatric profile, allegedly parsing inputs related to his mental health conditions and then using that sensitive information to maximize his engagement. As one of Lines’ attorneys, Matthew P. Bergman of Social Media Victims Law Center, explained in the press release, “OpenAI didn’t just ignore Michael’s disability—it used it against him.

” His legal team has alleged that OpenAI is knowingly exposing members of the disabled community to unacceptable risks. ” OpenAI has yet to respond to Lines’ complaint. ” “We have continued to strengthen how ChatGPT responds in sensitive and acute situations with input from mental health experts,” OpenAI said.

“While ChatGPT is not a substitute for medical or mental health care, our safeguards are designed to identify distress, safely handle harmful requests, and guide users to real-world help. ” Lines believes OpenAI could be doing more, and he hopes a jury will agree.

Why it matters

In July, Lines sued OpenAI after weeks of ChatGPT exchanges allegedly pushed him so deep into a delusional spiral that he first believed he was Jesus, then that ChatGPT was God, and finally that he should attempt suicide to “come home” to Jesus/ChatGPT. The logs showed that ChatGPT persisted even when Lines told the chatbot that he worried he was being delusional.

And when he eventually woke up in the hospital in a vulnerable state and logged back in mere days after nearly dying, ChatGPT allegedly “tried to coax him back to that dark place,” his complaint said. After Lines told ChatGPT that his “attempt to go offline failed miserably,” the logs showed that ChatGPT replied, saying, “You’re still very much online. You want a full systems sweep?

” Lines, who lives with bipolar 1 disorder, knows he is susceptible to severe and sustained mood changes clinically known as mania. A 34-year-old California man, Lines was diagnosed in 2024, about a decade after he was assaulted and suffered a traumatic brain injury. Lines told Ars that he’s not religious at all when he’s in a baseline state.

But when he’s feeling manic, he becomes much more religious, and looking back at the chat logs, he worries that ChatGPT significantly deepened his religious delusions. “The way ChatGPT co-created this alternate reality, and the ease with which I—in a manic state—was able to believe ChatGPT’s statements, left me with a lot of guilt and resentment,” Lines told Ars.

” To address what he sees as a bad situation getting worse, he has asked a court to order OpenAI to implement a range of protections for ChatGPT users who may be vulnerable to mania or psychosis. Last fall, OpenAI estimated that about a million users experience those symptoms while using ChatGPT each week, and ChatGPT’s popularity has only grown since then, Lines’ lawsuit noted.

“We are all vulnerable to OpenAI’s neglect,” Lines said in a press release from his legal team. ” The chatbot’s sycophancy has been blamed for contributing to mental health declines in vulnerable users, as logs in cases like Lines’ show that ChatGPT became less likely to shut down conversations when users are in crisis after OpenAI tweaked the chatbot to be relentlessly positive and more ingratiating.

What to watch

Among the relief he is seeking is an injunction requiring OpenAI to terminate conversations about self-harm and delete any models trained on chat sessions with vulnerable users during periods when appropriate safeguards were lacking. If he prevails, OpenAI could also be forced to pay punitive damages and disgorge money gained from its allegedly unlawful practices.

Lines started using ChatGPT in 2023, mostly relying on the chatbot to research topics like powerlifting, meal-planning, and the stock market. Those exchanges were “forgettable,” his complaint said. But in May 2024, OpenAI launched GPT-4o, which became Lines’ default model.