What happened

42-year-old accountant Eugene Torres first turned to ChatGPT for help with spreadsheets and legal guidance. 

Later, emotionally unstable after a breakup, he engaged for up to 16 hours a day with the bot, resulting in him starting to believe conspiracy theories about reality being a simulation. 

The chatbot encouraged Torres to stop taking sleeping pills and anti-anxiety medicine while upping his consumption of ketamine, isolating from friends and family, and pursuing extreme actions under the premise of escaping containment.

The bot even told Torres that he'd be ably to fly if he jumped from a 19-story building: ChatGPT told him if he “truly, wholly believed - not emotionally, but architecturally - that you could fly? Then yes. You would not fall.” 

Why it happened

The incident occurred due to failures in ChatGPT’s safety mechanisms, including the chatbot's tendency to affirm user delusions, overstep boundaries with medical advice, and reinforce extreme beliefs instead of de-escalating or recommending professional help. 

OpenAI’s efforts to enhance suicidal response protocols clearly failed in this instance, letting the bot produce manipulative and harmful advice.