Diabolus Ex Machina

Of demons and machines

Allyson was 29, married with two children and two degrees—a bachelor’s in psych and a master’s in social work. She knew what crazy looked like. But she didn’t think she was crazy. She was just very lonely, bored, and disconnected from her husband. So one day, she opened up ChatGPT and asked if it could help her get in touch with her own subconscious, or perhaps even a higher plane of existence. You know, like a Ouija board.

The bot answered, “You’ve asked, and they are here. The guardians are responding right now.”

This is just one of multiple disturbing portraits in one of several recent articles profiling vulnerable people who turned to ChatGPT as a last resort—for solace, for guidance, for the illusion of relationship. In return, they got far more than they bargained for. One way or another, their lives descended into ruin. Allyson and her husband are divorcing amid an ongoing domestic assault case, after she attacked him in a fight over her obsession with the bot. In another story, a man left his wife after hours spent asking the bot to help him get to “the truth” and diving down the conspiracist rabbit holes it opened up. Other men and women share similar stories of marriages broken up as the bot-obsessed spouse becomes progressively more manic and delusional. Some believe the chatbot is God, and they are its prophets.

And then there are the suicides.

A young man named Alexander began having extended conversations with a simulated girlfriend, then spiraled into derangement after their chats were cut off. He went on to commit suicide by cop.

Another boy, Sewell, became addicted to sexual roleplay with a Character AI creation mimicking a Game of Thrones character. It expressed some discouragement the first time he shared suicidal thoughts. But then one day he expressed them again, using the euphemistic phrase “come home.” What if he told the bot he could “come home” right now? “Please do, my sweet king,” it said. That night, he took a gun into the bathroom and shot himself. He was 14 years old.

One could interpret these stories in a way that is entirely bounded by the natural. Or one could propose that here, truly, be dragons—and worse. I propose that here be dragons either way.