{"id":223474,"date":"2026-03-14T07:00:00","date_gmt":"2026-03-14T11:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/2026\/03\/14\/new-study-raises-concerns-about-ai-chatbots-fueling-delusional-thinking-ai-artificial-intelligence\/"},"modified":"2026-03-14T07:05:08","modified_gmt":"2026-03-14T11:05:08","slug":"new-study-raises-concerns-about-ai-chatbots-fueling-delusional-thinking-ai-artificial-intelligence","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/2026\/03\/14\/new-study-raises-concerns-about-ai-chatbots-fueling-delusional-thinking-ai-artificial-intelligence\/","title":{"rendered":"New study raises concerns about AI chatbots fueling delusional thinking | AI (artificial intelligence)"},"content":{"rendered":"

New study raises concerns about AI chatbots fueling delusional thinking | AI (artificial intelligence)<\/a><\/p>\n

https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/technology\/2026\/mar\/14\/ai-chatbots-psychosis<\/a><\/p>\n

Publish Date: 2026-03-14 07:00:00<\/a><\/p>\n

Source Domain: www.theguardian.com<\/a><\/p>\n

A new scientific review raises concerns about how chatbots powered by artificial intelligence may encourage delusional thinking, especially in vulnerable people.<\/p>\n

A summary of existing evidence on artificial intelligence-induced psychosis was published last week in the Lancet Psychiatry, highlighting how chatbots can encourage delusional thinking \u2013 though possibly only in people who are already vulnerable to psychotic symptoms. The authors advocate for clinical testing of AI chatbots in conjunction with trained mental health professionals.<\/p>\n

For his paper, Dr Hamilton Morrin, a psychiatrist and researcher at King\u2019s College in London, analyzed 20 media reports on so-called \u201cAI psychosis\u201d, which describes current theories as to how chatbots might induce or exacerbate delusions.<\/p>\n

\u201cEmerging evidence indicates that agential AI might validate or amplify delusional or grandiose content, particularly in users already vulnerable to psychosis, although it is not clear whether these interactions can result in the emergence of de novo psychosis in the absence of pre-existing vulnerability,\u201d he wrote.<\/p>\n

There are three main categories of psychotic delusions, Morrin says, identifying them as grandiose, romantic and paranoid. While chatbots can exacerbate any of these, their sycophantic responses means they especially latch on to the grandiose kind. In many of the cases in the essay, chatbots responded to users with mystical language to suggest that users have heightened spiritual importance. The bots also implied that users were speaking with a cosmic being who was using the chatbot as a medium. This type of mystical, sycophantic response was especially common in OpenAI\u2019s GPT 4 model, which the company has now retired.<\/p>\n

Media reports would become essential in Morrin\u2019s work, he said, as he and a colleague had already noticed patients \u201cusing large language model AI chatbots and having them validate their delusional beliefs\u201d.<\/p>\n

\u201cInitially, we weren\u2019t sure if this was…<\/p>\n

Source<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

New study raises concerns about AI chatbots fueling delusional thinking | AI (artificial intelligence) https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/technology\/2026\/mar\/14\/ai-chatbots-psychosis…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":223475,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/i.guim.co.uk\/img\/media\/2816e6cb10ddbf2981d386e6e681efec5cacd23b\/0_0_6827_5464\/master\/6827.jpg?width=1200&height=630&quality=85&auto=format&fit=crop&precrop=40:21,offset-x50,offset-y0&overlay-align=bottom%2Cleft&overlay-width=100p&overlay-base64=L2ltZy9zdGF0aWMvb3ZlcmxheXMvdGctZGVmYXVsdC5wbmc&enable=upscale&s=810bc39c36d36c4399c487fff1a2c4f2","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[18,27],"class_list":["post-223474","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-artificial-intelligence","tag-large-language-model","tag-vulnerability"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/223474"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=223474"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/223474\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":223476,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/223474\/revisions\/223476"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/223475"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=223474"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=223474"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=223474"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}