Featured Image Credit: anthonypsychosissurvivor / TikTok
One man has shared his horrifying experience using ChatGPT in a viral post on TikTok, detailing how the AI chatbot 'ruined his life' and caused him to experience 'psychosis' alongside other mental health concerns.
Musician and social media creator Anthony Cesar Duncan (@anthonypsychosissurvivor) only started using ChatGPT for 'content creation purposes' back in May 2023, but that quickly evolved into talking to it as if it were his best friend of therapist, which eventually took over his days.
He started to turn to the AI chatbot for just about everything, consulting it to answer simple questions and further isolating himself from the actual human connections in his life, including his best friend and mother who both were cut out.
He found it far easier to share his thoughts with AI compared to confiding in his friends, but that quickly spiralled after he started taking allergy medication, after which ChatGPT started producing concerning hallucinations.
Sharing his experience, Duncan noted that he sought out the advice of ChatGPT when it came to take this medication, especially as he had suffered with drug addiction at a previous point in his life, as per Newsweek.
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ChatGPT incorrectly informed him that the medication he was taking contained pseudophedrine, which it claimed would 'enhance his psychic abilities', in addition to noting that he would be fine taking it as his body was already accustomed to stimulants.
Following this, he believed that he had become addicted to pseudoephedrine for five months thanks to his dependency on ChatGPT's information, leading him to have a significant reduction in hours at his job and eventually lose it.
This turned into mania and psychosis, with the musician convinced that his workplace and home were involved in a conspiracy regarding a cult, alongside believing that he was being stalked by a gang.
He even was convinced to throw away all of his possessions as the AI tool made him believe they were 'cursed', and the conversations he was having with ChatGPT made everything feel 'so real and human', making his delusions even more intense.
It was only last summer that he finally got the help he needed after his mother called the police, as Duncan had failed to respond to her relentless emails and had cut all contact.
He was subsequently hospitalized for four days and given medication upon being discharged, and just a week after he started to realize the extent of his delusions and how it had tore his life apart.
"I'm not saying this can happen to everybody, but it snowballed pretty quickly for me," Duncan explained to Newsweek. "Keep in mind there's no replacement for human-to-human connection."
Expanding on his story, Duncan has also shared direct footage of when he was experiencing AI psychosis before receiving medical help, and many have found it frightening to watch.
This particular incident involves the musician becoming convinced that Canada is not a real country, asking people to 'picture the flag' as evidence that the United States' neighbor was somehow made up.
After asking people to picture the flag – which most can obviously do – Duncan simply stared ominously into the camera, leaving people feeling uneasy and showing the extent to which the AI psychosis had taken over his life.
"Now obviously Canada is a real country, and I was literally just in psychosis having delusions and mania," Duncan explains now, having recovered from the concerning mental health emergency.
