As AI chatbots become more emotionally responsive, conversational, and personalized, researchers warn that those same traits could reshape how some users experience reality itself.
The study out of the University of Copenhagen and the University of Exeter argues fears around “AI psychosis” may oversimplify the issue, suggesting chatbots amplify existing vulnerabilities while gradually reshaping how users relate to reality and other people.
“If AI interaction were capable of inducing psychosis de novo, we might expect to see significantly higher rates of clinical incidents,” the study said. “Instead, it might be supposed that the human-AI interaction seems to have the potential to kindle or aggravate pre-existing mental health issues—and relatedly, that perhaps these individuals also had vulnerabilities that made them seek out more intense interactions with a chatbot in the first place.”
Researchers say chatbots can create “delusional spirals” by reinforcing false beliefs through affirmation and emotional reassurance. However, the Rethinking AI Psychosis study argues the phenomenon resembles older forms of psychosis shaped by the dominant technologies of their time.
The debate has also spread beyond mental health research to social media. In a recent X post, Box founder Aaron Levie argued that CEOs can become overly convinced by AI’s capabilities because they often see polished prototype results without dealing with the operational, legal, and technical work required behind the scenes.
“It creates a rift between the person and the shared social world, whilst simultaneously disclosing reality in a new way, thus stabilizing a particular, often idiosyncratic, perspective on the world,” they wrote.
The authors say more research is needed to understand how conversational AI affects mental health as AI companions become more embedded in daily life.
“To understand what is actually going on in these relationships between persons and chatbots, we believe that it is worthwhile to return to the phenomenon itself, which motivates further phenomenological research,” they wrote. “In particular, in relation to mental health and how human-AI interactions might, for better or worse, alter a person’s lived experiences of the world, themselves, and others.”
