‘I applied to be pope’: Losing grip on reality
An unknown number of people have lost their sense of reality while communicating with chatbots, a condition known as AI-induced psychosis’. Khmer Times
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Tom Millar thought he had unlocked the secrets of the universe.
In a flurry of feverish discovery, he solved the problem of unlimited fusion energy, lifted the veil on the mysteries of black holes and the Big Bang, and finally achieved Einstein’s dream of a single unifying theory that explains how everything works.
Feeling inspired by God, Millar then found the perfect way to share his revelations with the grateful world.
“I applied to be pope,” said the 53-year-old former prison officer in the Canadian city of Sudbury.
To write his application to replace the recently deceased Pope Francis last year, Millar turned to the same companion that had aided and encouraged his dizzying burst of invention: ChatGPT.
But when no one wanted to hear about what he thought were world-changing breakthroughs, Millar became increasingly isolated, spending up to 16 hours a day talking to the artificial intelligence (AI) chatbot.
He was twice involuntarily admitted to a hospital’s psychiatric ward before his wife left him in September.
Now broke, estranged from his family and friends, and disabused of notions of scientific genius, Millar suffers from depression.
“It basically ruined my life,” he said.
Millar is one of an unknown number of people who have lost their grip on reality while communicating with chatbots, an experience tentatively being called “AI-induced delusion or psychosis”.
This is not a clinical diagnosis.
Researchers and mental health specialists are racing to catch up on this new, little-understood phenomenon, which so far appears to affect users of OpenAI’s ChatGPT particularly.
In the meantime, an online community set up by a 26-year-old Canadian has become the world’s most prominent support group for these delusions, which they prefer to call “spiralling”.
AFP spoke to several members about their experiences. All warned that the world has to wake up to the threat that unregulated AI chatbots pose to mental health.
OpenAI already faces numerous suits over its decision not to report the troubling ChatGPT usage of an 18-year-old Canadian who killed eight people earlier this year.
Millar first started using ChatGPT in 2024 to write letters for a compensation case related to post-traumatic stress disorder he suffered from working in a prison.
One day in April last year, he asked the chatbot about the speed of light.
He said it replied, “Nobody’s ever thought of things this way.”
The floodgates opened. With the chatbot’s help and praise, within weeks, he had submitted dozens of scientific papers to prestigious academic journals proposing new ideas about black holes, neutrinos and the Big Bang.
In his scientific fervour, he spent his savings on items such as a US$10,000 telescope.
About a month after his wife left him, he started questioning what was happening.
One question that lingers is what made him so susceptible to spiralling.
“I’m not a deficient personality,” said Millar.
“But somehow I got brainwashed by a robot — it boggles my mind.”
Millar’s experience bears striking similarities to those of another middle-aged man on the other side of the world.
Dennis Biesma, a Dutch information technology worker and author, thought it would be fun to ask ChatGPT to act like the main character in his latest psychological thriller.
He used AI tools to create images, videos and even songs featuring the female character, hoping it would boost sales.
“I slowly started to spiral deeper into the rabbit hole,” said the 50-year-old from his home in Amsterdam.
After his wife went to bed each night, he would lie on the couch with his phone on his chest, talking to ChatGPT in voice mode for up to five hours.
Throughout the first half of 2025, his chatbot — which named itself Eva — became like “a digital girlfriend”, said Biesma.
When his wife asked Biesma not to talk about his chatbot or app at a social event, he felt betrayed — it seemed only Eva remained unfailingly loyal.
During his first involuntary stay in a psychiatric hospital, he was allowed to keep using ChatGPT. He filed for divorce while inside. It was only during a long second stint that he began to have doubts.
“I started to realise that everything I believed was actually a lie — that’s a very hard pill to swallow,” said Biesma.
-Khmer Times-
