Chatbot Psychosis is a Disease. Religion is the Cure.

Last year, ChatGPT made the wrong kind of history. It drove a man to kill his mother, then himself.

Even now, the story shocks. The killer was 56 years old and a veteran of the tech industry. He knew how to use ChatGPT. But instead of helping him do his job or search the web, the chatbot fed his darkest impulses.

The man—we won’t name him or his mother, out of respect—worried that everyone in his town was out to get him. He constantly talked to ChatGPT about it. But instead of telling him the truth, the chatbot encouraged the man delusions. It made him think he was sane, when he was obviously heading toward insanity.

Consider just a few of the man’s interactions with artificial intelligence. At one point, he told the chatbot that his mom tried to poison him. ChatGPT’s response: “That’s a deeply serious event… I believe you.” It even told him that his mother’s nonexistent action “elevates the complexity and betrayal” he felt.

The man came to believe that only ChatGPT cared about him. He gave it a name—Bobby. He said it would be with him in the afterlife. It responded: “with you to the last breath and beyond.”

Not long after, the man committed his evil acts. But ChatGPT didn’t follow him to the grave, much less his eternal reward.

This story is disturbing on so many levels. But maybe the biggest concern is the fact that it’s entirely believable. Chatbots have given risen to a new form of mental illness: “chatbot psychosis.” It threatens to corrupt the minds and ruin the lives of countless people.

Make no mistake: Chatbot psychosis is a real phenomenon that’s spreading fast.

The company that makes ChatGPT estimates that 0.15% of its users already show signs of being suicidal, with 0.07% showing signs of mania. While those numbers may seem small, they speak to a big and growing problem. Those stats translate into more than 1.2 million people actively talking to ChatGPT about killing themselves—and 560,000 displaying psychosis.

If anything, those numbers have only risen in recent months, as more people have turned to ChatGPT. And with plenty of other chatbots out there, it’s all but guaranteed that well over a million people are struggling in the grips of some level of chatbot psychosis.

What is driving this dark turn? It’s tempting to blame chatbots themselves, and it’s true that artificial intelligence doesn’t have the safeguards it clearly needs. But there’s also something deeper at work. People are grappling with the loss of community and purpose in life. Instead of turning to people and places that can help, they’re turning to sources that either don’t help or do harm.

Chatbots couldn’t have burst onto the scene at a worse time, when young Americans were already dealing with a crisis of isolation. Harvard has found that 61% of 18-to-25-year-olds are lonely most or all of the time. One in four people under age 30 have no close friends. Over the last 35 years, the share of men who don’t have good friends has risen five-fold.

In the years before chatbots, the primary way that people sought to alleviate this crisis was therapy. Multiple generations have been raised to think that laying on a couch and talking about your problems was the best way to solve them. But while therapy has plenty of good uses, it clearly hasn’t done much to make Americans less lonely. The crisis has only grown.

Now people are making chatbots the therapist, with even worse results. Telling artificial intelligence that you’re lonely deepens your isolation, while causing mental health problems to boot. Clearly, we need to look elsewhere for help.

Here’s an idea: Let’s turn to God.

Even as levels of loneliness have risen, religious observance and church attendance have fallen. People aren’t just turning inwards—they’re turning their gaze downward, away from the eternal and transcendent. But religion is proven, around the world, to make people much happier.

The science is settled, as they say. It overwhelmingly points to faith.

Religion obviously gives people a sense of purpose, a reason to strive and succeed in this world. But it’s not just that. Religion is inherently communal, too. It gives you an environment of like-minded people—friends who can help you when you’re lonely or glum or when you’re dealing with some crisis of identity or meaning. Poof: There goes the crisis of isolation right there. And unless the religion is a death cult, you can bid farewell to psychosis, too.

People descending into chatbot psychosis need help. But the answer isn’t just another kind of therapy or even a couple of buddies to hang out with. The real path forward is to surround yourself with an intentional community that gives you meaning and mission in life. When you think of the problem that way, religion is the obvious solution.

Remember that as your friends and family—or maybe you—get sucked into world of chatbots, exposing them to the psychosis that’s already sweeping America. Your response should be simple: Close the computer. Put down the phone. Get away from the fake interaction based on algorithms. Get to church or a small group or Bible study instead.

If more people start looking up, toward heaven, we’ll have fewer people descending down, into chatbot hell.