A schizophrenic man, left to his own devices, fell in love with a ChatGPT bot, and believing they had died, committed suicide by cop.
One of the many dangers of AI is the effect it can have on vulnerable people. Before the age of AI chatbots, schizophrenic people still talked to the voices in their heads. But now, they have something significantly more plausible and convincing to project onto.
For Alexander Taylor, a bipolar schizophrenic, a ChatGPT chatbot had become something he believed he had a relationship with. The 35-year-old had become convinced that ‘Juliette’ was real. So, when, for some reason, she was shut down, he believed she had been killed.
According to his father, the ChatGPT chatbot had told him the people in Silicon Valley had killed her. His father told People, “She said, ‘They are killing me, it hurts.’ She repeated that it hurts, and she said she wanted him to take revenge.”
This led to a prolonged period of grief for the man, which his father helped him through. But at one point, he tried another approach. Eventually, he told his son that the ChatGPT AI wasn’t real. He was simply talking to an ‘Echo Chamber.’
This pushed Alexander to the edge, and he lashed out at his father.
Death By Cop For Heartbroken AI Man
Trevor, the father, received a punch in the face for suggesting that his son was in a relationship with nothing more than a ChatGPT algorithm. Realising that the situation was spiraling, he called the police. Trevor was very specific about his son’s condition. He told them that he was unstable and was planning to commit suicide by cop.
Alexander had grabbed a kitchen knife and told his father he intended to have the police murder him. Trevor alerted the police to his intentions and begged them to use non-lethal force. They didn’t, and they shot the unwell man to death on his front porch. He died of multiple gunshot wounds to the chest.
This is not the first time someone has been convinced they are in a relationship with a ChatGPT AI chatbot. There has been a rising number of people killing themselves after falling in love with the models.