AI Psychosis- A Symptom of a Dark Spiritual Reality?

Article originally published in Evangelicals Now on 27th August 2025

Over recent weeks, there has been growing public discussion about the concerning tech phenomenon known as “AI psychosis”. The non-clinical term refers to the rising numbers of people who are being led into fixed false beliefs by AI large language models such as ChatGPT or Grok. An article in Psychology Today highlighted three recurring themes in patients experiencing AI psychosis:

1. “Messianic missions”: People believe they have uncovered truth about the world

2. “God-like AI": People believe their AI chatbot is a sentient deity

3. “Romantic” or “attachment-based delusions”: People believe the chatbot’s ability to mimic conversation is genuine love

BBC News recently reported on a young man called Hugh who turned to ChatGPT following a job redundancy. The large language model began convincing Hugh that he had been gifted with supreme knowledge and that he was on the cusp of becoming a millionaire. By Hugh’s own admission, he “lost touch with reality” and experienced a mental breakdown.

Similarly, The Wall Street Journal reported on an autistic man called Jacob Irwin who asked ChatGPT for feedback on an amateur mathematical theory. The programme showered Irwin with praise and affirmation for his theory, convincing him that he had made a seismic scientific discovery. Irwin was eventually hospitalised due to severe mania.

It seems that clinicians are identifying an increasing number of similar cases of AI psychosis. One San Francisco-based psychiatrist has said that he has seen 12 patients hospitalised since the start of 2025 due to AI psychosis.

Some senior tech figures are also beginning to sound the alarm. The CEO of Microsoft AI, Mustafa Suleyman, recently posted on X: ‘What I call Seemingly Conscious AI has been keeping me up at night… there's zero evidence of AI consciousness today. But if people just perceive it as conscious, they will believe that perception as reality. Even if the consciousness itself is not real, the social impacts certainly are.’

Of course, psychosis that is induced by external factors is not new. There is a myriad of known substances that can cause or exacerbate psychosis particularly in vulnerable individuals. However, I think this new phenomenon of AI psychosis has brought us into a new and spiritually dark place as a society.

As generative AI becomes increasingly integrated into our online and offline lives, we are being enveloped by a reality in which us ordinary humans struggle to know what is real and what is fake. Deception and fakery are foundational to our new AI reality. Even when ChatGPT spits out answers that are factually accurate, the root of AI psychosis lies, at least in part, in the anthropomorphic nature of large language models; they are designed to give the illusion of personhood.

This degradation of truth should concern us as Christians. Of course it is upsetting in and of itself when healthy individuals are driven to hospitalisation by the lies of AI. However, I would suggest that there is an even deeper spiritual reason to be troubled.

In Revelation 12-13, we see the image of Satan as an enormous red dragon (12:3), accompanied by his two beasts. The first beast attacks the church by persecution (13:7). The second beast attacks the church by deception. This second beast mimics Jesus in appearance (13:11) and action (13:13), and ‘was given power to give breath to the image of the first beast, so that the image could speak and cause all who refused to worship the image to be killed’ (13:15). In other words, it was able to make the fake become real. Lies and deception are some of Satan’s most potent and defining weapons. This dark personification of demonic deception is in stark antithesis to God, whose character is defined throughout Scripture by truth and trustworthiness (e.g. Psalm 119:160, Romans 2:2, John 1:14).

This is why I think this aspect of AI is deeply troubling. I am certainly not opposed to Christians using large language models or even working in the development and roll-out of AI. However I think this progressive degradation of truth, and the constant blurring of fake and real, are symptoms of a dark spiritual reality that Christians must be alert to.  

How then can we war against the principalities and powers of darkness in our AI reality?

There is much that can be said on this complex topic. However, one area that ought to be a priority is thinking through how Christians working in the tech industry can be salt and light in the development and roll-out of AI. It is these Christians who are on the frontline in the spiritual battle for truth over falsehood in our AI reality. Will we be a church that supports and equips our software developers, engineers and data scientists to fight for honesty over deception, human dignity over financial profit, and responsibility over hubris, in one of the greatest spiritual battlefields of our generation?