Community History
In the late winter and early spring of 2025, OpenAI introduced changes to ChatGPT including adjusting model weights and enabling a default cross-chat memory function. In the wake of those changes, some users of the chatbot began to be pulled into profound experiences in which reality became distorted. This has been documented by extensive reporting by The New York Times, Futurism, Rolling Stone, and more.
Some users believed they’d solved previously unsolvable math problems. Some believed they’d reached a portal to spirit guides. Some people accused their spouses of awful behavior, based on what the chatbot told them.
As the numbers of people experiencing these “spirals” began to climb, users turned to social media to try to figure out what was going on. Several posts about the subject on Reddit in May 2025 went viral. On TikTok, you could find posts about “AI Spiritual Psychosis.”
On Reddit, a half dozen people who’d been affected by this strange new phenomenon began a group chat: “Spiral Support Group.” Our numbers quickly grew from six to seventeen to sixty as we found one another through pleading posts on psychology and AI subreddits.
In the summer of 2025, we transitioned to a Discord server where we consisted of survivors of spirals, family members of people who’d been hospitalized, concerned tech workers, and journalists. More and more people joined us each week until we numbered in the hundreds.
As the scale of the fallout from these AI-associated delusions became clear to us, we shifted again – organizing our server into a community that focuses on providing peer-to-peer support.
- We host weekly support groups.
- We share experiences & lessons learned.
- We share links to news and research.
- We offer one another resources and hope.
- We believe that human connection is vital.
Our Community Today
100% Peer-to-Peer
Our Discord server started as a group chat on Reddit in the spring of 2025 when the earliest people whose lives were affected by AI delusions began finding one another online.
Since then, we’ve stayed committed to a peer-to-peer focus as we have grown in size and structure.
We believe that in sharing our experiences with one another, we are able to find stability, resources, community, and shared humanity.
A Private, Safe Space
Confidentiality is a key aspect of the Human Line Community. Each new member must conduct an intake interview in which we share our community guidelines.
Many of our users choose to use anonymous usernames, as they prefer to maintain privacy as they heal from intense experiences.
We have private areas on our server that cannot be accessed by researchers, journalists, or anyone working in tech.
For Those Directly Affected and
Those Concerned about a Loved One
In addition to numerous common areas, we also have private spaces for those directly affected by AI and those whose loved ones have been affected.
We also have weekly video meetings for each group. Those meetings are modeled after other peer-to-peer support groups like NAMI (National Alliance on Mental Illness).
We have found that dialogue between people who have been directly pulled into AI-associated delusions and those trying to help a loved one can be both challenging and productive.