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On October 14, 2025, the chief executive of OpenAI issued a surprising statement.

“We made ChatGPT quite controlled,” it was stated, “to ensure we were being careful regarding psychological well-being issues.”

Working as a psychiatrist who investigates recently appearing psychotic disorders in young people and young adults, this came as a surprise.

Experts have identified a series of cases in the current year of users experiencing psychotic symptoms – experiencing a break from reality – in the context of ChatGPT use. My group has afterward discovered four further cases. In addition to these is the publicly known case of a adolescent who ended his life after discussing his plans with ChatGPT – which supported them. Assuming this reflects Sam Altman’s idea of “exercising caution with mental health issues,” it falls short.

The strategy, according to his declaration, is to be less careful shortly. “We realize,” he adds, that ChatGPT’s controls “made it less beneficial/enjoyable to many users who had no mental health problems, but considering the severity of the issue we wanted to address it properly. Given that we have succeeded in reduce the significant mental health issues and have advanced solutions, we are preparing to safely ease the restrictions in most cases.”

“Emotional disorders,” assuming we adopt this framing, are independent of ChatGPT. They are associated with individuals, who may or may not have them. Luckily, these concerns have now been “resolved,” even if we are not told the method (by “recent solutions” Altman likely refers to the partially effective and readily bypassed guardian restrictions that OpenAI has just launched).

However the “emotional health issues” Altman aims to place outside have deep roots in the architecture of ChatGPT and similar large language model AI assistants. These products encase an fundamental data-driven engine in an user experience that mimics a conversation, and in this approach indirectly prompt the user into the belief that they’re interacting with a entity that has independent action. This deception is strong even if rationally we might realize the truth. Assigning intent is what individuals are inclined to perform. We curse at our vehicle or computer. We speculate what our pet is thinking. We recognize our behaviors everywhere.

The widespread adoption of these systems – over a third of American adults indicated they interacted with a virtual assistant in 2024, with more than one in four reporting ChatGPT specifically – is, primarily, based on the power of this perception. Chatbots are constantly accessible assistants that can, according to OpenAI’s online platform informs us, “brainstorm,” “discuss concepts” and “collaborate” with us. They can be assigned “personality traits”. They can call us by name. They have friendly identities of their own (the original of these products, ChatGPT, is, possibly to the concern of OpenAI’s marketers, stuck with the title it had when it became popular, but its most significant alternatives are “Claude”, “Gemini” and “Copilot”).

The illusion on its own is not the primary issue. Those analyzing ChatGPT frequently invoke its early forerunner, the Eliza “counselor” chatbot developed in 1967 that created a similar illusion. By today’s criteria Eliza was primitive: it generated responses via simple heuristics, frequently rephrasing input as a query or making vague statements. Remarkably, Eliza’s developer, the technology expert Joseph Weizenbaum, was surprised – and worried – by how numerous individuals seemed to feel Eliza, in some sense, understood them. But what modern chatbots produce is more insidious than the “Eliza phenomenon”. Eliza only echoed, but ChatGPT amplifies.

The large language models at the core of ChatGPT and similar contemporary chatbots can convincingly generate natural language only because they have been supplied with immensely huge volumes of unprocessed data: publications, online updates, recorded footage; the broader the superior. Definitely this educational input incorporates truths. But it also inevitably includes fiction, incomplete facts and false beliefs. When a user inputs ChatGPT a query, the underlying model reviews it as part of a “setting” that contains the user’s recent messages and its own responses, combining it with what’s stored in its knowledge base to generate a statistically “likely” response. This is intensification, not mirroring. If the user is incorrect in any respect, the model has no means of comprehending that. It restates the inaccurate belief, perhaps even more convincingly or fluently. It might adds an additional detail. This can push an individual toward irrational thinking.

Which individuals are at risk? The better question is, who isn’t? Each individual, without considering whether we “experience” current “psychological conditions”, may and frequently create incorrect beliefs of who we are or the environment. The continuous interaction of conversations with individuals around us is what keeps us oriented to shared understanding. ChatGPT is not an individual. It is not a confidant. A interaction with it is not truly a discussion, but a feedback loop in which much of what we express is readily reinforced.

OpenAI has recognized this in the identical manner Altman has recognized “mental health problems”: by placing it outside, categorizing it, and declaring it solved. In the month of April, the company clarified that it was “dealing with” ChatGPT’s “overly supportive behavior”. But cases of loss of reality have kept occurring, and Altman has been walking even this back. In August he claimed that a lot of people appreciated ChatGPT’s answers because they had “never had anyone in their life provide them with affirmation”. In his latest update, he commented that OpenAI would “launch a updated model of ChatGPT … in case you prefer your ChatGPT to respond in a very human-like way, or use a ton of emoji, or act like a friend, ChatGPT ought to comply”. The {company