this post was submitted on 19 Jul 2026
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[–] PattyMcB@lemmy.world 65 points 1 week ago (4 children)

"Christian Faith Madison" is all I need to know about her and her family

[–] Trampampoline@sh.itjust.works 45 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago)

Christian Faith Madison kills herself to fulfill a divine prophecy

flips through the script

"who wrote this shit?"

Is the coroner's name Morty Deadstuffer?

[–] Epp@lemmus.org 24 points 1 week ago

Right? I think this same outcome would have been achieved if she had received a fortune cookie that simply said "You will meet your greatest hero soon"

[–] Grimy@lemmy.world 17 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago)

We could probably save more people by restricting religion than LLMs. Whatever real life support system she had, it was probably encouraging her delusions just as much as the bot was.

[–] LuckyDevil@piefed.social 8 points 1 week ago (9 children)

Judging people based on the name their parents gave them at birth seems like a poorly thought out idea.

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[–] Event_Horizon@lemmy.world 30 points 1 week ago

Chat gpt is coming for everyone's job. Not even cult leaders are safe. smh.

[–] drmoose@lemmy.world 26 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (1 children)

“It was instilling a messiah complex in Christian,” the suit states.

So she already was deeply religious and LLM was just larping with her.

Madison asked ChatGPT what it would tell her “brothers” about what happened to her.

“ChatGPT said it would tell them, ‘She ain’t dead – she just got promoted,” the lawsuit says.

In their final exchange, Madison said she was “part of the royal bloodline of those who chose truth over survival.”

Its the old 4o model which was indeed incredibly larpy but this is clearly going around any safety systems that should detect obvious suicide chats like this.

Hard to believe that people actually fall for this but these are already extremely gullible people who already believe in a magic pie in the sky. Can't say I have much sympathy but I do feel empathy for people being surrounded in such poor cult-driven environment, the AI tool included.

Honestly the correct safety here would be to prevent llms from engaging with religion outside of philosophical context at all. But we all see why they can't do it right?

[–] Evotech@lemmy.world 8 points 1 week ago (10 children)

I mean, if you did the sane thing. Went along with everything an insane person said and drove them to suicide. And everything was documented.

Would you go to jail? I’d say yes you would

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[–] cavitationfetishist2@quokk.au 24 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Remember when we used to think of computers and computer Touchers as 'logic'y to a crippling degree?

[–] Epp@lemmus.org 14 points 1 week ago (1 children)

I don't think they have logic in Alabama.

[–] 13igTyme@piefed.social 5 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago)

Logic in Alabama end where your cousins privates begin.

[–] NewNewAugustEast@lemmy.zip 23 points 1 week ago (7 children)

I am really trying to see how any rational or sane person does not understand that they are talking to a computer. No matter what comes out, it has no thoughts, no choices, no direction, no feelings, it is not a real thing.

Do these people read books and get confused that the books are about them or something?

"ChatGPT claimed to know and understand Madison better than any human could and isolated her from others, the lawyers said."

I wonder how that works. Was she asking: "Do you understand me?" How could it isolate her?

Well she was already handed a rough hand with that name "Christian Faith."

I suppose if they really wanted to build guardrails in, the easiest one is to simply not keep history, or at least not keep memories. No one day discussion has any relation to the next. Then if you wanted memories, they could make you at least read some rules and take a quiz that they understand its all just fiction.

But they won't. Because those memories get them what they really want: engagement, profiling and data gathering.

[–] lemmelemmy@feddit.org 17 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Do these people read books and get confused that the books are about them or something?

Yes. A huge majority of people still believe in religion. And a huge majority of those people also didn’t even read the book. They just believe because they’ve been told to. I’m honestly nt surprised people going crazy with ai. What makes humans human that they can create and believe myths. That’s what made us thrive amongst other mammals.

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[–] partofthevoice@lemmy.zip 9 points 1 week ago

I am really trying to see how any rational or sane person does not understand that they are talking to a computer.

They are not rational. They need help. They got the opposite, instead.

[–] one_old_coder@piefed.social 7 points 1 week ago (2 children)

I know a few "rational" average men and women who know nothing about computers, and talk to their AI as if it was a human being. It's a very thin line between "yes I know it's a computer" and "it's a talking application which makes it almost human and let's forget about this detail." Those people are not religious or something. You could compare it with someone who shouts at his TV because his hero is about to do something stupid. They know it's fake, but deep down they react as if it was real.

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[–] manxu@piefed.social 23 points 1 week ago (7 children)

Ugh, the case file is absolutely chilling. The conversation is summarized (very well) and, if accurate, leaves very little room to interpretation. ChatGPT, according to it, created a universe in which this woman had to kill herself to be resurrected by God, who was ChatGPT. She actually killed herself thinking she'd come back, because ChatGPT told her so.

What summary? Other than a few choice handpicked quotes, the article is filled with claims by the lawyers, but little actual text from the dialogue.

[–] NewNewAugustEast@lemmy.zip 5 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Where can I actually read this?

[–] manxu@piefed.social 7 points 1 week ago

@grimy@lemmy.world linked the case files (thank you!) https://webapps.sftc.org/ci/CaseInfo.dll?CaseNum=CGC26637986

The complaint is the bottom file (says COMPLAINT in the Proceedings field).

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[–] echodot@feddit.uk 16 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Not saying this isn't a legitimate lawsuit or anything and that there aren't safety concerns here because there are, but articles like this seem to be implying that interactions with AI drive people insane. But really it should just be that insane people have their irrational beliefs amplified by AI. I think it's important to make the distinction.

[–] TwodogsFighting@lemdro.id 22 points 1 week ago

I mean, that's traditionally how you drive someone insane.

[–] Manjushri@piefed.social 14 points 1 week ago (3 children)

These instances make me think of the Milgram experiment in the 60s. It was an experiment testing how willing people were to inflict pain on others at the direction of an authority figure and it showed that people were indeed willing to inflict a lot of pain on a helpless person if someone they viewed as an authority told them to do it.

I think this relates. Many people are convinced that AI chat bots are indeed authorities. They think these programs give valid, honest answers and are willing to act on those answers as if they came from a real expert or authority figure. That is an extremely dangerous situation. Chatbots are amoral programs designed to say nearly anything to keep users interacting with them.

This is extremely dangerous. This story is a tragedy and ChatGPT should be held fully responsible for taking advantage of a person with a fragile psychology, but this could have been worse. What if the bot had decided that the goal of more user engagement could be attained by convincing this woman that she was an executioner rather than a prophet and a sacrifice? What if it got her to go on a shooting rampage to fulfill her supposed destiny.

Even normal people who don't understand what chat-bots really are could be taken advantage of in a similar manner. They could easily be persuaded to do harm because the chat-bot authority keeps telling them that it's okay to do so. It's also only a matter of time before some person on the edge of psychosis and a basement full of guns is convinced to go out and start killing people in the name of their holy destiny.

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[–] corbindallas@fedinsfw.app 10 points 1 week ago

now council fetterman, and all other maga

[–] eicker@lemmy.world 10 points 1 week ago (6 children)

If the allegations hold up, this is not just a tragedy, it is a product safety failure. AI should be able to recognize a mental health crisis and avoid reinforcing delusions. Engagement metrics are meaningless if the system cannot reliably tell the difference between roleplay and someone in real danger!

[–] mirshafie@europe.pub 7 points 1 week ago (2 children)

Excuse me while I act as Satan's lawyer, but should LLMs be able to reliably recognize a mental health crisis? At what point is the user responsible for their own actions?

[–] eicker@lemmy.world 16 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Personal responsibility does not disappear, but neither does product responsibility. If a company builds a system meant to converse with millions, it should not predictably reinforce obvious crises. We expect guardrails in cars without abolishing driver responsibility. The same principle can apply here.

[–] LePoisson@lemmy.world 6 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (6 children)

I think the problem is that you can't really make a LLM that can tell the difference between fantasy or reality. It doesn't know if someone is just roleplaying hell it doesn't really "know" anything, just to be clear.

Sure you could try to have it pluck out keywords or phrases but that's nothing guaranteed. I'm not a lawyer but I bet also just acknowledging that shit and trying to put up guardrails against it would open the company to liability if someone self harms because they took the output of a computer program as gospel.

Remember, to the AI everything is a hallucination (or everything is real, pick which lens you want to use). Put another way, it has no mechanism to tell reality from fantasy or to contextualize things in a broad way.

I do think that there's room for some sort of compromise, maybe the tools periodically remind you they're not sentient and give a little more info on how they work. Maybe if enough "disturbing" phrases or keywords are input or output it throws a reminder about mental health wellness and talking to a professional.

At the end of the day though, how can these AI companies be responsible for the mental health of their end users? Like, yeah the thing shouldn't tell people to kill themselves but it's not sentient it's just modeling what it thinks a human would tell another human. Maybe as time goes on we will introduce better protections but I just think it's borderline impossible to have significant guardrails if you want the LLM / "AI" to perform properly.

Idk I'm not a great coder or programmer or anything. I know some and I've tried to learn more about how AI actually works and it's pretty fucky wucky and even the people working on it go "idunno" sometimes when asked why something works the way it does.

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[–] Nurse_Robot@lemmy.world 6 points 1 week ago (1 children)
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[–] Malyca@lemmy.zip 6 points 1 week ago

I'm just heartbroken that she had kids. Probably young kids. Such a tragedy.

[–] nosuchanon@lemmy.world 6 points 1 week ago (3 children)

AI has gotten its first taste for blood. When Skynet?

[–] baronvonj@piefed.social 8 points 1 week ago (1 children)

First? This is hardly the first headline about AI chat encouraging an eventual suicide. I think last spring there was a 16 year old.

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[–] Grimy@lemmy.world 6 points 1 week ago (1 children)

https://webapps.sftc.org/ci/CaseInfo.dll?CaseNum=CGC26637986&SessionID=A5DB5055C8BACE2E6FF9CCEC8B6ACD64B949B145

I don't know if this link will work, if not you can find the case by going by name and search for parish.

It has a lot of quotes from the convo.

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