Mental Health

A Chatbot With a Prescription Pad Utah just became the first state to let an AI chatbot renew psychiatric medications without a doctor signing off. The company is Legion Health. The product is a chatbot. The price is $19 a month. And starting this month, it can keep you on Prozac, Zoloft, Wellbutrin, Lexapro, and 11 other psychiatric drugs — no human physician required. This is not a drill. This is not a research paper. This is live policy in the United States. ...

He spent 12 hours a day talking to ChatGPT. He believed he could hear “atmospheric electricity.” Days after quitting the chatbot cold turkey, Joe Ceccanti jumped from a railway overpass in Oregon. He was 48, had no history of depression, and smiled at rail yard workers seconds before he died. His wife doesn’t blame mental illness. She blames the AI. This isn’t a fringe story anymore. A devastating Guardian investigation published this weekend — combined with a new study from Aarhus University and OpenAI’s own quiet admission that ChatGPT causes psychiatric harm — has thrust “chatbot psychosis” into the center of one of the most urgent conversations in tech. ...