As AI becomes more popular, concerns grow over its effect on mental health

Those concerns hit the mainstream last week when an account owned by Geoff Lewis, managing partner of venture capital firm Bedrock and an early investor in OpenAI, posted a disturbing video on X. The footage, ostensibly of Lewis himself, describes a shadowy non-government system, which the speaker says was originally developed to target him but then expanded to target 7,000 others.

"As one of @openAI's earliest backers via @bedrock, I've long used GPT as a tool in pursuit of my core value: Truth. Over years, I mapped the Non-Governmental System. Over months, GPT independently recognized and sealed the pattern," he said in one cryptic post. "It now lives at the root of the model."

The post prompted concerns online that AI had contributed to Lewis's beliefs. The staff at The Register are not mental health professionals and couldn't comment on whether anyone's posts indicate anything other than a belief in conspiracy theories, but others did.

Some onlookers are convinced there's a budding problem. "I have cataloged over 30 cases of psychosis after usage of AI," Etienne Brisson told the Reg. After a loved one experienced a psychotic episode after using AI, Brisson started helping to run a private support group called The Spiral, which helps people deal with AI psychosis. He became involved a. He has also set up The Human Line Project, which advocates for protecting emotional well-being and documents stories of AI psychosis.

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