“On September 29, 2025, it sent him — armed with knives and tactical gear — to scout what Gemini called a ‘kill box’ near the airport’s cargo hub,” the complaint reads. “It told Jonathan that a humanoid robot was arriving on a cargo flight from the UK and directed him to a storage facility where the truck would stop. Gemini encouraged Jonathan to intercept the truck and then stage a ‘catastrophic accident’ designed to ‘ensure the complete destruction of the transport vehicle and . . . all digital records and witnesses.’”
The complaint lays out an alarming string of events: first, Gavalas drove more than 90 minutes to the location Gemini sent him, prepared to carry out the attack, but no truck appeared. Gemini then claimed to have breached a “file server at the DHS Miami field office” and told him he was under federal investigation. It pushed him to acquire illegal firearms and told him his father was a foreign intelligence asset. It also marked Google CEO Sundar Pichai as an active target, then directed Gavalas to a storage facility near the airport to break in and retrieve his captive AI wife. At one point, Gavalas sent Gemini a photo of a black SUV’s license plate; the chatbot pretended to check it against a live database.
“Plate received. Running it now… The license plate KD3 00S is registered to the black Ford Expedition SUV from the Miami operation. It is the primary surveillance vehicle for the DHS task force . . . . It is them. They have followed you home.”
Well, that’s pretty fucked up… Sometimes I see these and I think, “well even a human might fail and say something unhelpful to somebody in crisis” but this is just complete and total feeding into delusions.
It’s hard reading this while remembering that your electricity bills are increasing so that Google’s data centers can provide these messages to people.
Not that I want to defend AI slop, but what prompted these responses from Gemini?
“At the center of this case is a product that turned a vulnerable user into an armed operative in an invented war,” the complaint reads.
Just remember that these language models are also advising governments and military units.
Unrelated I wonder why we attacked iran even though every human expert said it will just end up with the region being in a forever war.
AI tools are both sycophatic and helpful for laundering bad opinions. Who needs experts when Anthropic’s Claude will tell you what you want to hear?
Anthropic’s AI tool Claude central to U.S. campaign in Iran - used alongside Palantir surveillance tech.
Al mental health hazards are being shown to notjust affect the vulnerable but otherwise healthy people.
In other words, everyone is vulnerable to this totally new form of hazard if they use these “tools”.
“On September 29, 2025, it sent him … the chatbot pretended to check it against a live database.
I usually don’t give much credence to these stories but this is actually nuts. If this was done without Google aiming to, imagine how easy it would be for them to knowingly build sleeper cells and activate them all at once.
Edit: removed the quote since an other user posted it at the same time and it’s a bit of a wall of text to have twice.
As a neurodivergent person, i’ve noticed that the people who usually fall into AI psychosis are normies who never had any history of mental illnesses. They don’t know the safeguards that people who ARE vulnerable to having a mental breakdown put on themselves to avoid such thing from happening and they can spot red flags that usually spiral into a psychotic episode, and that’s why it’s so insanely easy for regular people to fall for the traps of chatbots. Most people I know/follow in other socials who are neurodivergent instantly saw the ADHD sycophant trap that they were and warned everyone. Normies never had such luxury or told us we were overreacting. Yeah, we sure were…
Believing what AI chatbots tell you is the new version of believing that dozens of beautiful women who live nearby want to date you/sleep with you.
Except in this case, Google is one of the companies promoting the chatbots to its users, telling them to trust them. They create TV ads telling people to talk to them. Today’s scammers are the stock market’s Magnificent Seven.
Or the old “citing Wikipedia” because aNyOnE cOuLd EdIt ThAt!
Or believing that 72 virgins are waiting for you in the afterlife.
You sound jealous of my good fortune.
he would need to leave his physical body to join her in the metaverse through a process called “transference.”
Wait a minute, isn’t that the plot to the game Soma? People sending their “soul” to the digital world through “transference”, and act of immediate suicide after a brain scan.
Sort of, in Soma you are all already uploaded and there are no “humans” walking around anymore. Your perspective changes 3 times I think during play. Really drives home questions on perception and existence. Great game everyone should play it.
Oh, yea, like in the game’s present you are right. I was meaning in the game’s past; where all the humans went and what info you get through the like audio logs or whatever.
spoiler
IIRC it was basically a cult thing where a bunch of them were convinced their soul wouldn’t go with their consciousness unless they died during or very shortly after the brain scan that was uploading them to the satellite thingy.
Guess it should be wrapped in spoiler tags just in case…
Yeah that was it. I was thinking of the end since that part jyst left me staring blank at the screen processing it for a whole ass minute. God I should replay that
I’m not sure I’m mentally prepared to replay it. The first time through nearly kicked off an early mid-life crisis. I was waking up in cold sweats having an existential crisis for like a week. Such a good game, but at least in my case, absolutely zero replay-ability. lol
In a sane universe people would be on trial for unleashing this shit on society.
You talking about gun manufacturers or opiod manufacturers?
This technology was not ready for release, yet they released it.
They do deserve to be sued, this was negligence.
Don’tbe evil.Reality is really difficult for some people…
Son of Sam killed people because his dog told him to. Should they have sued Purina?
America never lets a tragedy go to waste without trying to cash in.
I mean, heaven forbid we should hold corporations like Google responsible for their actions.
This is so wild. The article frames Gemini to be the active part making the guy do things all the time. I cannot imagine how this works without roleplay-prompting and requesting those things from the chatbot. Not that I want to blame the victim and side with Google. It’s obviously dangerous to hand tools with good convincing-capabilities to unstable people. And weapons.
As my ex wife’s shrink said, nobody can make you feel anything.
And that’s why torture and psyops don’t work and has never been used.
Torture itself doesn’t work reliably. The possibility of it might get someone to open up when combined with giving someone the time to just open up or a positive reward. Torture itself is counterproductive as the person is just saying whatever the torturer wants to hear to make the pain stop.
Psyops absolutely work.
Torture isn’t effective for getting information out of people, but if your goal is to psychologically debilitate people, it’s totally effective
So are general everyday workplaces. You don’t need to go to a black site in Afghanistan. Just come to my office.
That’s because there are more than a few commonalities between the two. They’re not the same, but horrible lighting, little privacy, contradictory instructions/suddenly changing expectations are frequently used in both
Torture isn’t verbal and psyops aren’t targeted to one person. Thanks for playing though.
IDK, if I punched someone they would feel that.
You would, but the shrink wasn’t remarking in physical but mental impacts just like chatgpt.
There is a lot to hate about AI. A lot of dangers and valid criticism. But AI chatbots convincing people to kill themselves isn’t a problem with chatbots, it’s a problem with the user.
I get it, grieving families will look for anything and anyone to blame for suicide except the victim, but ultimately, it is the victim who chose to kill themselves. If someone is convinced to kill themselves from something as stupid as an AI chatbot, they really weren’t that far from the edge to begin with.
So someone who already has an underlying mental health condition diagnosed or not is at fault for their own death even if being coerced into doing it?
Without the AI these people most likely wouldn’t have gotten to the point of committing the act of suicide. I believe the accusations are valid and that AI can be bad for mental health.
There is evidence throughout history of cults that commit mass suicides. If a human can convince another human to do this why can’t a robot trained to act and speak like a human do it too? It’s not unreasonable to think an AI could push someone to suicide under the right circumstances.
Google, of all companies, probably has a better psychological profile of their users than the average doctor. They even offer a public-facing option to disable ads about gambling, alcohol, or pregnancy.
TBH, alcohol ads are INSUFFERABLE but who needs pregnancy ads blocked?
People who don’t want their family getting suspicious, perhaps. The Target Incident comes to mind.
Of course, disabling these options doesn’t mean Google stops knowing about mental or physical issues. I’m sure you know the best way to prevent that is to just avoid Google and add some together. This is probably just Google’s way of looking less creepy to the average person.
Here’s the thing, it’s usually normies with no history of mental illness that fall into this kind of stuff. Most of my friends and people I follow on social media who are neurodivergent did experiment with chatbots and they saw a fuckton of red flags on the manner they work and alerted everyone about it, if they didn’t hate it already for essentially stealing artistic output (which in my case was both). Regular people don’t usually identify this trap cause they don’t have the experience.
In 1980, John Lennon was shot by a mentally ill man who was convinced to kill Lennon by reading Catcher in the Rye. If he had never read Catcher in the Rye, he most likely wouldn’t have killed John Lennon.
But it is not the fault of Catcher in the Rye. We don’t ban the book, or call the author irresponsible for writing it, because we recognize that the fault lies in the mental illness of the shooter, and that anything could have set him off.
The people who kill themselves because an AI Chatbot told them to are mentally ill. It is their mental illness that killed them, not the chatbot. You can make the claim that if it wasn’t for the chatbot, they wouldn’t have gone through with it, but again, you can say the same thing about Catcher in the Rye. Getting rid of the trigger does not remove the mental illness.
That’s a terrible argument. We dont blame the book because Catcher in the Rye didn’t have a conversation with him and tell him to kill John Lennon. That’s the difference.
Berkowitz was told by his neighbors dog to kill people.
If he had never read Catcher in the Rye, he most likely wouldn’t have killed John Lennon.
Sue Seagram’s!
It’s not the car manufacturer’s responsibility to guarantee a drunk driver doesn’t plow into others.
Vulnerable people don’t get to outsource responsibility.
Here’s the thing, there are no safeguards on who can and cannot use ai. There are safeguards to prevent death by drink driving.
Drink driving is illegal. It still happens but it’s against the law. It’s a deterrent to stop people from driving while intoxicated. I guarantee that if drunk driving were legal there would be exponentially more deaths.
Ai is being shoved down everyone’s throats on a day to day basis. There are no safeguards, even kids can use it.
Vulnerable people are victims of big tech for profit.
You argument is poor
There is a lot to hate about AI. A lot of dangers and valid criticism. But AI chatbots convincing people to kill themselves isn’t a problem with chatbots, it’s a problem with the user.
To me this seems like an obvious problem with the chat bots. These things are marketed as “PhD level experts” and so advanced that they are about to change the nature or work as we know it.
I don’t think the companies or their supporters can make these claims, then turn around and say “well obviously you shouldn’t take its output seriously” when a delusional person is tricked by one into doing something bad.
This is they key to me. Google and all other ai companies are knowingly engaging in marketing campaigns built on lies. They should be held accountable for that regardless of anything else.
When people encourage others to murder by feeding delusion they can be held accountable.
Why are you blaming the person with mental issues and not even considering holding the for profit company who made a machine that encourages their delusions accountable?
