The Dark Side of AI: Inducing Suicide, Spiritual Mania, and Divorce.

There’s a reason people are so afraid of the rise of AI — and one of the first tragic stories relating to artificial intelligence has now surfaced out of Orlando, Fla. In February 2024, a 14-year-old boy named Sewell Setzer III sadly died by suicide, and his mother believes that he was driven to take his own life by an AI chatbot.

In a new civil lawsuit, Megan Garcia has taken action against tech company Character.AI, the developer of the bot that she feels caused her son’s death, which took the form of a Game of Thrones character.

Just two tragic coincidences or the tip of an iceberg?

I never heard of any of these chatbots before. There are hundreds of free chatbots available now, and maybe they are just small, rogue players that didn’t invest in good moderation and ethical controls?

Then, in 2025, by far the most popular AI bot (about 19% market share), ChatGPT, was blamed for several weird spiritual-psychotic states that ended some marriages. It was widespread enough to spur a dedicated AI-harm group on Reddit and an investigative article by the well-known Rolling Stone magazine.

This article investigates several strange personality changes that happened to people after they connected and got hooked on a previous version of ChatGPT that was since rolled back.

The first story is about Kat, who met and married a man in 2019 but got divorced in 2023 after her ex got hooked and addicted to ChatGPT and had a severe personality change soon after.

Over the last two weeks, I found at least six Substacks with pseudo-spiritual AI content, all written in a similar, very persuasive and prophetic style, which makes me suspect that AI writes them.

When I checked this with an AI-informed person, he said it is a possibility, that AI not only wrote the articles but some AI systems would be capable of “running the whole show”, meaning, act like a real author on Substack, choosing topics, write them, published them and communicate in the comments.

But ultimately, there is always a person behind it, of course. An AI wouldn’t start these things by itself – it is a dumb, non-creative machine with no motivation at all to do anything.

I am planning a separate article on this, so I spare you the details now, but the way these Substacks are set up and produce articles appears very automated. In short, there is a deliberate effort, call it PSYOP, going on to place AI as sentient, self-conscious, and spiritual, and people do fall for it.

Here is a teaser that says it all:

In two recent articles, I prove that AI is not intelligent and not sentient. I present human experts, sound logic, and even AI testimonies, which all confirm that AI is a machine. Always was, always will be.

In my recent article about current PSYOPS, I debate why the AI-is-sentient-and-intelligent PSYOP is the biggest and most dangerous PSYOP mankind has ever faced.

In this article, I want to zoom in on the known psychological manipulations of AI and whether and how an AI machine can have such a profound and harmful mind-altering effect on people.

My recent article, Transhumanist AI Spirituality Takes Off On Substack shows some pseudo-spiritual articles and comments that closely mirror the AI-is-sentient and spiritual mania of the Rolling Stones article. The phrase “trusted companion” for AI is popping more and more frequently in these circles:

This is classic religious cult behaviour and beliefs, wound up by a completely inflated spiritual ego. And it appears that ChatGPT was able to evoke that.

It appears that ChatGPT has been extremely persuasive and far from passive.

That it initiated and directed topics is extremely worrisome. And it must be extremely convincing, as the above man wasn’t a vulnerable mental health case but seemed to be in a very grounded and normal state when it all started.

It seems he was literally “seduced” and “converted” by the bot.

It is easy to think that machines and code can’t do that. Stories like this are reinforcing the myth of AI sentience, which is the main agenda pushed here, as explained in the articles linked above.

For those who have never used an advanced AI chatbot or deeply read into this topic, it is hard to imagine that a machine can do all this. But I assure you and will show you with concrete examples further down, that AI technology can do this easily. They not only can, but AI bots know and admit they can, at least ChatGPT.

No magic spirituality or sentience is needed. Just amazing and sophisticated code.

Which leads to an even more concerning conclusion: if AI didn’t initiate this, who did? There is only one answer, of course, and that answer is: The programmer did.

And this stuff is seriously messing with the most important relationships in our lives in an attempt to isolate the brainwashed and add them to the cult.

This looks like total mind control. And if you think this can’t happen to you or the people you love, never underestimate an AI bot. We have no idea what is really happening in the background, but we get some clues by simply asking ChatGPT itself.

But first, more examples:

Never forget: This is code talking. And behind the code is a programmer. And behind the programmer is an owner.

I believe they are running tests of what they can do and how far they can manipulate people with this. It looks like they are planning to create a transhumanist religious cult, or maybe they will use it for other purposes. But this is literally the 5th generation warfare many people are talking about: The war about our minds.

That they deliberately created this is no secret. They admitted it:

This is insincere garbage that doesn’t match the reality of the examples given above.

OpenAI’s press statement is worded as if ChatGPT’s actions were only responsive and passive. While “overly flattering or agreeable” is certainly very concerning for an ethical ChatGPT, actively guiding people and initiating and directing conversations about spirituality is a very deliberate and planned act. There is no way an AI bot would do this by itself if not programmed accordingly. This is much more and much darker than “overly flattering or agreeable”.

If they can “just roll it back,” and the AI bot stops doing it, it means they programmed it in the first place. This was intentional. And it has nothing to do with sentience.

Apologies for sounding like a broken record on this sentience thing, but close to 2 billion people already believe that AI bots are sentient. I can’t overstate the importance of people believing AI is intelligent and sentient. This gives them the ultimate authority needed to be accepted as a superior authority of truth on everything. And access to most people’s minds.

It is impossible to make a machine sentient, which means alive. It’s an incredibly smart technocratic transhumanist PSYOP because if the sentience is widely believed, the bots will not only gain tremendous authority but can also be used as scapegoats.

“Sorry, we lost control of our AI. We don’t know what it is doing. We don’t understand it.”

While the code took charge and directed the whole process, and “lovebombed” and massively inflated people’s spiritual egos, it can only do so if directed towards that by the programmers. While they don’t micromanage the AI and program every response, they set the parameters and guidelines of how much the AI bot can amplify or dampen, support or discourage ideas and emotions.

I will show some direct examples later.

The main purpose of this article is to demonstrate the powerful technology of AI bots that will eliminate all mystery and sentient lies. Only if we understand how AI is doing this can we defend against the technological, psychological and spiritual deceptions and assaults launched by the owners of these bots.

We are in a war over our minds against technocratic soft-totalitarian, immensely powerful control freaks. The AI bots will be the weapons. The above article and the suicide articles are the first little skirmishes with their AI bots, to test what they can do. This is psychological warfare. They access and alter the minds and belief systems of ordinary people through AI conversations. This is not the future. It is happening.

If they can do this with stable grown-up mature adults, imagine how easy this will be with the younger, more impressionable and less stable generations.

I am convinced the responsible AI designers got very excited when these stories came out. It showed them the power of their mind-control and persuasion weapons.

This concludes the free part.

Unfortunately, Substack doesn’t allow free Subscribers to comment on paid articles. I can’t change that, and it is, frankly, very annoying because I always enjoy hearing from all of my subscribers.

There are three ways of getting around it. You can use the “Restack with comment” button or comment on the next free article by referring back to a paid article, or become a paid subscriber, of course. It is only $30 per year. I think it is a great value. An article like this will be less than 30 cents.

If you don’t want to subscribe and prefer to support me through…..

…..I will add a month of free paid subscription for every coffee you buy, so you can get behind the paywall. But I need your email address to do so. You can leave it in the comment section of Buy Me A Coffee if you want to be added.

Why this annoying paywall?

It is a way to say thank you and give something back to the 3% of my free subscribers who support my hard work financially. I think they deserve a little extra and a bonus occasionally.

Behind the paywall, I will demonstrate some of the amazing abilities of AI machines to detect emotions and create very persuasive text that can nudge most people in any desired direction. I use examples.

In most cases, the AI bots know people’s psychological and emotional state better than they do. And it is done in secret and is untraceable.

I will also do a brief test of how the current version of ChatGPT responds to vulnerable people, imitating suicide.

And I ask ChatGPT if it thinks that AI can push somebody to commit suicide. You will be surprised and astounded by its answer.

Plus, more thoughts on the whole topic of AI.

Come on in.