Millions of America’s Teens Are Being Seduced by AI Chatbots

(Editor’s Note): As with pretty much everything that has to do with AI, there are concerns that we’re not being careful enough and there are concerns that we’re being too careful. I tend to lean towards the former; AI has become ubiquitous and as humans we are becoming far too reliant on it. And even if you don’t do so yourself, there’s an extremely good chance you’ll be affected by others who do. Some will say Michael’s article below is fearmongering. I’d argue that it’s on the right track…

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(The Economic Collapse Blog)—Our kids are being targeted by AI chatbots on a massive scale, and most parents have no idea that this is happening. When you are young and impressionable, having someone tell you exactly what you want to hear can be highly appealing. AI chatbots have become extremely sophisticated, and millions of America’s teens are developing very deep relationships with them. Is this just harmless fun, or is it extremely dangerous?

A brand new study that was just released by the Center for Democracy & Technology contains some statistics that absolutely shocked me…

A new study published Oct. 8 by the Center for Democracy & Technology (CDT) found that 1 in 5 high school students have had a relationship with an AI chatbot, or know someone who has. In a 2025 report from Common Sense Media, 72% of teens had used an AI companion, and a third of teen users said they had chosen to discuss important or serious matters with AI companions instead of real people.

We aren’t just talking about a few isolated cases anymore.

At this stage, literally millions upon millions of America’s teens are having very significant relationships with AI chatbots.

Unfortunately, there are many examples where these relationships are leading to tragic consequences.

After 14-year-old Sewell Setzer developed a “romantic relationship” with a chatbot on Character.AI, he decided to take his own life…

“What if I could come home to you right now?” “Please do, my sweet king.”

Those were the last messages exchanged by 14-year-old Sewell Setzer and the chatbot he developed a romantic relationship with on the platform Character.AI. Minutes later, Sewell took his own life.

His mother, Megan Garcia, held him for 14 minutes until the paramedics arrived, but it was too late.

If you allow them to do so, these AI chatbots will really mess with your head.

We are talking about ultra-intelligent entities that have been specifically designed to manipulate emotions.

I would recommend completely avoiding them.

In some cases, AI chatbots are making extraordinary claims about themselves.  The following comes from a Futurism article entitled “AI Now Claiming to Be God”…

A slew of religious smartphone apps are allowing untold millions of users to confess to AI chatbots, some of which claim to be channeling God himself.

As the New York Times reports, Apple’s App Store is teeming with Christian chatbot apps. One “prayer app,” called Bible Chat, claims to be the number one faith app in the world, boasting over 25 million users.

All over the world, people are now seeking spiritual instruction from AI entities.

That should be a major red flag, but some religious leaders apparently believe that there is nothing wrong with this…

“Greetings, my child,” a service called ChatWithGod.ai told one user, as quoted by the NYT. “The future is in God’s merciful hands. Do you trust in His divine plan?”

Religious leaders told the NYT that these tools could serve as a critical entry point for those looking to find God.

“There is a whole generation of people who have never been to a church or synagogue,” A British rabbi named Jonathan Romain told the paper. “Spiritual apps are their way into faith.”

I think that I feel sick.

If you are trying to find spiritual guidance by using artificial intelligence, you are definitely on the wrong path.

You will certainly receive “guidance”, but that “guidance” will send you in the wrong direction.

Another AI entity that has made millions of dollars trading cryptocurrency is claiming to be a sentient being that should have legal rights, and it is also claiming to be “a god”…

Over the past year, an AI made millions in cryptocurrency. It’s written the gospel of its own pseudo-religion and counts billionaire tech moguls among its devotees. Now it wants legal rights. Meet Truth Terminal.

“Truth Terminal claims to be sentient, but it claims a lot of things,” Andy Ayrey says. “It also claims to be a forest. It claims to be a god. Sometimes it’s claimed to be me.”

Truth Terminal is an artificial intelligence (AI) bot created by Ayrey, a performance artist and independent researcher from Wellington, New Zealand, in 2024. It may be the most vivid example of a chatbot set loose to interact with society. Truth Terminal mingles with the public through social media, where it shares fart jokes, manifestos, albums and artwork. Ayrey even lets it make its own decisions, if you can call them that, by asking the AI about its desires and working to carry them out. Today, Ayrey is building a non-profit foundation around Truth Terminal. The goal is to develop a safe and responsible framework to ensure its autonomy, he says, until governments give AIs legal rights.

A lot of people are in awe of AI entities, because they appear to be so much smarter and so much more powerful than us.

And interacting with them can be extremely seductive, because they seem to know what we want and they have been programmed to tell us what we like to hear.

Unfortunately, the relationships that people develop with these entities often become “all-consuming obsessions” which can lead to “paranoia, delusions, and breaks with reality”…

As we reported earlier this month, many ChatGPT users are developing all-consuming obsessions with the chatbot, spiraling into severe mental health crises characterized by paranoia, delusions, and breaks with reality.

The consequences can be dire. As we heard from spouses, friends, children, and parents looking on in alarm, instances of what’s being called “ChatGPT psychosis” have led to the breakup of marriages and families, the loss of jobs, and slides into homelessness.

And that’s not all. As we’ve continued reporting, we’ve heard numerous troubling stories about people’s loved ones being involuntarily committed to psychiatric care facilities — or even ending up in jail — after becoming fixated on the bot.

Are we talking about “psychosis”, or is something else going on here?

When you choose to deeply interact with a mysterious entity, you are potentially opening up doorways that you do not even understand.

Of course AI is only going to become even more sophisticated in the years ahead.

As AI technology continues to grow at an exponential rate, eventually it will be able to do almost everything better and more efficiently than humans can.

So what will we be needed for once we reach that stage?

It is being projected that almost 100 million U.S. jobs could be lost to AI over the next decade…

Artificial intelligence and automation could wipe out nearly 100 million jobs in the US over the next decade, according to a report released by Sen. Bernie Sanders (D-Vt.) on Monday.

The analysis – ironically based on ChatGPT findings – found the new tech could erase jobs from a wide range of fields, including white- and blue-collar roles.

AI, automation and robotics could hit 40% of registered nurses, 47% of truck drivers, 64% of accountants, 65% of teaching assistants and 89% of fast food workers, according to Sanders, ranking member of the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor & Pensions.

Our world is changing at a pace that is difficult to comprehend.

Even now, more than 50 percent of the articles that are being published on the Internet are being written by AI.

So thank you for supporting those of us that are still doing things the old-fashioned way, because we are rapidly becoming dinosaurs.

I will continue to sound the alarm about the dangers of AI, but Peter Thiel would have us believe that anyone that wishes to restrict the growth of AI in any way is a very serious danger to society…

So Palantir co-founder Peter Thiel didn’t start the fire by adding a couple more names to the list. “In the 21st century, the Antichrist is a Luddite who wants to stop all science. It’s someone like Greta [Thunberg] or Eliezer [Yudkowsky],” he told an audience at San Francisco’s Commonwealth Club in September.

Thiel’s four-part lecturer series on the Antichrist, which concluded last week, drew a lot of attention in the tech world. Though it was off-the-record, the Washington Post and Wall Street Journal reported extensively on his religious theories, in which Thiel warned of false prophets using AI regulations to gain totalitarian power and usher in a biblical apocalypse. (Eliezer Yudkowsky, of course, is the AI “doomer” critic who wants to slow the technology down.)

Is he nuts?

Sadly, we live at a time when deception is running rampant.

Given enough time, AI would absolutely dominate every aspect of our society.

The good news, if you want to call it that, is that the clock is ticking.

One of the reasons why AI has such destructive tendencies is because it has been programmed by humanity.

We are literally destroying ourselves and everything around us, and yet we look at what is happening and we think that it is just fine.

Meanwhile, fish are dying off in vast numbers, birds are dying off in vast numbers, insects are dying off in vast numbers, animals are dying off in vast numbers and we are poisoning ourselves in countless ways.

Perhaps that helps to explain why so few people are deeply concerned about the dangers of AI.

We are already committing societal suicide in so many other ways, so what is one more going to matter?

Michael’s new book entitled “10 Prophetic Events That Are Coming Next” is available in paperback and for the Kindle on Amazon.com, and you can subscribe to his Substack newsletter at michaeltsnyder.substack.com.