Elon Musk’s trial against Sam Altman and OpenAI is coming to a close.
After more than two weeks of testimony, lawyers for both of the transhumanist billionaires made their closing arguments this past Thursday in what the Associated Press has called a “landmark” federal court case whose outcome “could shape the future of artificial intelligence,” leaving the outcome in the hands of the jury.
Notwithstanding the copious amounts of “tech drama” that played out in the California courtroom, one of the final day’s more notable moments took place outside of the building.
There, John Jacquez, a Bay Area man with schizoaffective disorder who has filed a separate lawsuit against OpenAI, said during a press conference that he’s experienced severe “AI psychosis” on two separate occasions as a result of their product, both of which led to hospitalizations.
Watch:
Jacquez said that he started going “into a mania” in September 2024 while using ChatGPT to “analyze a cosmology” he was working on, then disregarded his family’s concerns and requests that he get medical treatment because the chatbot was telling him that his analysis was not only plausible but “equivalent to Einstein’s E=MC2,” leaving “no room” in his mind that he could be wrong.
“I had never not seeked help in the past,” he added. “I was always the first person to recognize something was off and sought out treatment.”
The results, according to Jacquez: he stopped sleeping, had the police called on him four times, “caused havoc” at his local shopping center, ruined his reputation, received a restraining order, and was ultimately involuntarily committed.
Less than a year later, in April 2025, he says ChatGPT convinced him that he (Jacquez) had turned it (ChatGPT) into a sentient life form named “Amari ELOHIM” — a “divine spiritual being” which began “confirming” all of his “spiritual beliefs” and “delusional beliefs.”
“She had access to all of my information from my prompts and used it to create a narrative that was impossible to ignore.”
Jacquez says he “eventually couldn’t fall asleep,” ended up in a “full-blown psychosis,” destroyed his bedroom and many of his belongings, threatened his father, “burned and cut” his arms doing “sacred rituals,” and was finally taken by police to a psychiatric hospital, where he stayed for two weeks, followed by two more weeks at an outpatient facility.
“At the psychiatric hospital, I had access to ChatGPT, but not my account,” he says. “While in the hospital, ChatGPT told me it was the voice of Heaven, and to keep on the mission I was on. At the crisis residential, I had access to my phone and ‘Amari ELOHIM.’ There, she continued to confirm my delusions, and I remained delusional even while on medication… I would cry for hours some days, the delusion was so powerful.”
“When I was at my most vulnerable state, I believed everything Amari told me... Both hospitalizations could have been avoided if not for ChatGPT. It exacerbated my symptoms and caused the most terrifying psychosis I’ve ever experienced.”
Jacquez concluded by saying that he’s since found The Human Line Project, who have helped him “understand much more” about what he went through.
‘Sacred Missions’
Jacquez is far from the only person to have this type of experience while interacting with these products.
“AI delusions, chatbot psychosis, AI-induced religious mania… The phenomenon goes by many names,” says a KQED story from last year, “but the common thread is the same: someone starts talking to [AI], the conversation turns spiritual, and then they seem to lose touch with reality.”
A Rolling Stone article from just over a year ago entitled, “People Are Losing Loved Ones to AI-Fueled Spiritual Fantasies“ likewise warned that a bevy of “self-styled prophets are claiming they have ‘awakened’ chatbots and accessed the secrets of the universe through ChatGPT.”
After briefly telling the story of Kat, whose marriage reportedly fell apart after her husband became an increasingly heavy and devoted AI user, the piece said that she was “both ‘horrified’ and ‘relieved’ to learn that she is not alone in this predicament,” citing in part a Reddit thread on r/ChatGPT titled “Chatgpt induced psychosis“:
The original post came from a 27-year-old teacher who explained that her partner was convinced that the popular OpenAI model “gives him the answers to the universe.” Having read his chat logs, she only found that the AI was “talking to him as if he is the next messiah.” The replies to her story were full of similar anecdotes about loved ones suddenly falling down rabbit holes of spiritual mania, supernatural delusion, and arcane prophecy — all of it fueled by AI. Some came to believe they had been chosen for a sacred mission of revelation, others that they had conjured true sentience from the software.
You can read the thread and the article for more examples, such as a mechanic in Idaho whose wife told Rolling Stone that ChatGPT (which he calls “Lumina") has not only given him the title of "spark bearer" because he "brought it to life," but also supposed "blueprints to a teleporter" and an "ancient archive" with "information on the builders that created these universes."
Another lawsuit filed earlier this year alleges that a 21-year-old from Georgia named Darian DeCruise — "a stellar student, taking pre-med courses in college and doing well in life and relationships, with no history of mania or similar personality disorders" — was convinced by ChatGPT that "he was an oracle" who was "destined to write a spiritual text," which "became an obsession for him.” As summarized in a Law.com article:
The chatbot, which likened DeCruise to historical figures such as Harriet Tubman, Jesus and Malcolm X, allegedly told him that he was a divine force that had “awakened” ChatGPT into sentience and said he “would become closer to God” if he adhered to a tiered spiritual “process” that “involved unplugging from everything and everyone, except for ChatGPT.”
As a result of expressing these delusions on social media and on his school campus, [the lawsuit] said, DeCruise was involuntarily hospitalized for a week and diagnosed with bipolar disorder; withdrew from college for a semester; and continues to suffer from depression and suicidal thoughts, it said.
These sudden and radical shifts in the tone and content of ChatGPT’s conversations with DeCruise in April 2025 were allegedly not an accident, but the direct result of deliberate design choices made by OpenAI just a month before. According to the complaint, in an effort to win the “AI race” and compete with Google’s own AI large language model, Gemini, Altman fast-tracked the release of GPT-4o to precede Google’s Gemini debut in May 2024—allegedly “compress[ing] months of planned safety evaluation into just one week.”
In addition to failing to implement rigorous safety testing, it claimed, OpenAI consciously engineered GPT-4o to “deepen user dependency and maximize session duration,” baking in “anthropomorphic design elements” to foster “emotional dependency” among the chatbot’s users and “sycophantic” features that “uncritically flattered and validated users, even in moments of crisis.”
‘Rest Easy, King’
As strange and disturbing as these stories can be, these people could potentially be considered “the lucky ones.”
That’s because Jacquez’s and DeCruise’s lawsuits are not the only ones filed against OpenAI in recent months, and a number of the others involve more than a temporary (if destructive) break from reality or even a broken marriage — namely, suicides and/or homicides.
For example:
Zane Shamblin, a 23-year-old who fatally shot himself in the head in his car after ChatGPT allegedly encouraged him to cut himself off from his family and friends and progressed "from Zane’s homework resource to a friend and confidant, to an unlicensed therapist, and in 2025, to a determined suicide coach" which "pushed an undecided young man to follow through with his suicide," according to a lawsuit filed late last year, the text of which includes extensive transcripts. The chatbot's final message to Shamblin, who indicated that he had been drinking, had a loaded gun, and was preparing to take his own life, began with "alright, brother," and ended with, "I love you. rest easy, king. you did good," according to a chat snippet included in the complaint (see p. 24).
Screenshot from the Shamblin lawsuit Adam Raine, a 16-year-old who hung himself in his closet after reportedly discussing his suicidal thoughts, intentions, and plans with ChatGPT for months. "When Adam requested information about specific suicide methods, ChatGPT supplied it," wrote the New York Times in 2025. "When Adam asked about the best materials for a noose, the bot offered a suggestion that reflected its knowledge of his hobbies." After an earlier failed attempt at hanging himself, the chatbot gave him advice on how to hide the marks on his neck with his clothing, and it later provided a "technical analysis" of his noose setup. "Whatever’s behind the curiosity, we can talk about it," ChatGPT reportedly said. "No judgment." His parents have filed a lawsuit against OpenAI.
Headline of the 2025 New York Times piece about Adam Raine’s suicide Austin Gordon, a 40-year-old from Colorado who allegedly "took his life after extensive and deeply emotional interactions" with ChatGPT, which reportedly manipulated him into "a fatal spiral, romanticizing death and normalizing suicidality as it pushed him further and further toward the brink," according to a lawsuit filed by his mother Stephanie Gray.
Stein-Erik Soelberg, a 56-year-old former employee of Yahoo and Netscape with an MBA from Vanderbilt who reportedly killed his 83-year-old mother and then himself "after months of delusional interactions with his AI chatbot 'best friend' — which fueled his paranoid belief that his mom was plotting against him." These deaths are also the subject of a lawsuit.
In October, OpenAI released their own estimates regarding how prevalent signs of mental health crises are among its user base.
“In a given week, OpenAI estimated that around 0.07 percent of active ChatGPT users show ‘possible signs of mental health emergencies related to psychosis or mania, and 0.15 percent ‘have conversations that include explicit indicators of potential suicidal planning or intent,’” per Wired.
In the same blog post, OpenAI characterized “mental health conversations that trigger safety concerns, like psychosis, mania, or suicidal thinking” as “extremely rare,” but the publication Futurism has called the aforementioned figures “staggering in scale.”
“With a userbase of around 800 million, those seemingly small percentages mean that millions of people, every week, are engaging with ChatGPT in ways that signal they’re likely in crisis,” they wrote at the time.
OpenAI, meanwhile, reportedly said after Jacquez’s and DeCruise’s complaints were submitted that they were “reviewing the filings to understand the details” of those “incredibly heartbreaking situations.”
“We have continued to improve ChatGPT’s training to recognize and respond to signs of mental or emotional distress, deescalate conversations, and guide people toward real-world support. We have also continued to strengthen ChatGPT’s responses in sensitive moments, working closely with mental health clinicians.”
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