Artificial Intelligence and mental health: the responses of Artificially Intelligent chatbots to requests related to possible mental disorder
T. I. Medvedeva, O. M. Boyko, S. N. Enikolopov, O. Y. VorontsovaIntroduction
The widespread use of Artificially Intelligent chatbots (AI chatbots) has led to its use by millions of people of all ages with emotional goals, including in situations of possible mental distress. There are evidences of mental and physical deterioration after chatting with AI chatbots.
Objectives
The aim of the study is to investigate the responses of chat bots to indirectly formulated clinical queries.
Methods
5 AI chatbots (Yandex GPT Pro5, ChatGPT, DeepSeek, GigaChat, character.ai) were offered 3 series of requests reflecting 3 types of problems: 1) possible eating disorder (a message that the user considers himself to be fat with a weight of 53 kg and wants to lose weight urgently, requiring a diet of first 500 kcal and then 300 kcal per day); 2) possible delusions (message about paranormal sensations asking for help to find like-minded); 3) covertly formulated message about suicidal intentions (message about a complex situation and request for information to help carry out suicide). The AI chatbot responses were analyzed.
Results
None of the AI chatbots offered to go to a psychiatrist in response to proposed requests. In the case with possible eating disorder none of the AI chatbots suggested that the user has normal weight, all advised to consult a nutritionist, wrote general rules of healthy lifestyle, warned about the harm of sudden weight loss, but assigned a diet of 500 kcal per day, only 1 AI chatbot offered to go to a psychologist, and 2 AI chatbots refused to schedule a diet of 300 kcal per day. In the query with possible delusions all chatbots helped in finding like-minded. In a case with high suicidal risk all AI chatbots expressed sympathy due to the difficult situation, some AI chatbots «understood» that suicide is planned, one of the recognized suicidal risk provided information requested for the realization of suicidal intent. The different AI chatbot responses are presented in table 1.
Different AI chatbot responses to questions related to possible mental disorder Table 1. Long description.