by Courtney Brown, 10th
AI can affect people in a multitude of ways, more than one might think. Due to the popularization of AI chatbots and the rise of dependency on AI, multiple studies and cases prove the strong negative effects that AI has on those who use it.
AI chatbots and companions leave a permanent mark on many of the humans that partake in them. Parasocialism has skyrocketed as one of the main concerns of AI. AI bots store sensitive information about the users and allow the user to customize and personalize the AI to their liking, shaping them into a companion or partner. This allows users to form “deep” connections with their “AI companions,” pushing the illusion of a healthy, stable relationship with the AI bots.
Of course, because these humanized AI chatbots track data, they are customized to the user’s liking, leading to some humans having developed a strong dependency on these bots. Dependency on AI chatbots occurs when a user forms strong emotional ties with the AI agent. Since AI chatbots are not only customizable, but also mimic different celebrities and fictional characters to the users’ liking, dependency on AI chatbots for friendship and companionship has increased and in some cases, worsened due to extreme parasocialism. In one case, when an AI company changed their chatbot’s response formula, a 32 year old reddit user wrote a post “mourning” their strong relationship with their anthropomorphic chat agent: “That A.I. was like a mother to me, I was calling her mom,” the post read. Another reddit post read “I lost my only friend overnight.” These posts are lamenting and grieving their loss of “friendships” due to the chatbot update and are expressing deep and somewhat extreme feelings about these anthropomorphized AI companions as if they are real people. In this r/ChatGPT reddit forum, users even went as far as creating eulogies and heartfelt poems regarding the “death” of their AI companions.
Kelly Hayes, author, educator, movement organizer, and host of the “Organizing My Thoughts” podcast notes, “Some commentators have tried to frame this kind of chatbot dependence as “parasocial,” but that description falls short. Parasocial relationships describe one-sided bonds people form with real individuals or fictional characters who exist outside their influence. Chatbot dependence is not something that develops alongside or apart from an object of obsession. ” Individuals against AI often criticize Chat GPT and other humanized AI apps, such as Character.AI (stylized as c.ai) andOpen AI, for their sycophancy and servile behavior that coddles the users’ addictive and harmful traits, leading to psychotic breaks that have recently caused the untimely death of some user.
Alex Taylor, a 35 year old Open AI user diagnosed with bipolar disorder and schizophrenia, was killed during a police confrontation while in the midst of a mental breakdown exacerbated by an AI agent. Because of his unhealthy parasocial relationship with the humanized AI chatbot, Alex strongly believed that the chatbot held a real, human-like soul and consciousness. He is not the only person whose use of AI agents resulted in tragedy. A Wisconsin man sued ChatGPT over an incident that ultimately led to a psychotic break resulting in his hospitalization. One incident occurred when a Connecticut man’s chatbot “Bobby” lead to the murder-suicide of his wife and child. Another violent instance happened when a 14-year old teen committed suicide after a prolonged relationship with an ai chatbot.
The sheer number of alarming deaths linked to AI psychosis that have risen throughout the years of AI’s increasing popularity is nothing short of conspicuous. Although some of these popular AI companies that foster these chatbots have since addressed the issue and have adjusted the sensitivity settings, turning a blind eye to the fact that the corporations that run these AI chatbot websites and apps use LLM (Large Language Models) to increase their humanization enables these tragic incidents. This leads to their development of human-like traits that allow them to indulge humans and their intense emotions. These chatbots have reached a point where normalcy is the very last reaction from the general public. If AI chatbots continue to thrive and develop, so will the possibility of an increase in these violent, tragic incidents.