A Belgian man has taken his own life after a series of conversations with an Artificial Intelligence (AI) chatbot.
According to the Belgian mediaFreeThe man, referred to in the report as Pierre, used an app called Chai to communicate with a bot called Eliza for six weeks after becoming “increasingly concerned about global warming,” Vice and The New also reported. York Post.
“He was so isolated in his ecological anxiety and looking for a way out that he saw this chatbot as a breath of fresh air,” his wife Claire, whose name was also changed in the report, told the Belgian outlet, according to the Post. She “she had become his confidant.”
“Without Eliza, he would still be here,” he was quoted as saying by the media. Eliza is the name of the app’s default bot, according to Vice.
During their conversations, which were shared with the outlet, the chatbot apparently became jealous of the man’s wife and talked about living “together, as one, in paradise” with Pierre, according to Vice and The New York Post, citing the Belgian report.
At another point in the conversation, Eliza told Pierre that his wife and children were dead, according to the media.
His wife told La Libre that her husband started talking to the chatbot about committing suicide if it meant Eliza would save the Earth, and that the chatbot encouraged him to do so, the media reported.
In a statement to Vice, Thomas Rianlan, one of the co-founders of the app’s parent company, Chai Research, said it would “not be accurate” to blame the AI model “for this tragic story.”
The chatbot’s AI language model is based on GPT-J, an open source model developed by EleutherAI, but has been modified by Chai Research, Vice reported.
Co-founder William Beauchamp told the outlet that “by the time we found out about this [suicidio]”, began working in a crisis intervention role. “Now when someone discusses something that might not be safe, we’ll send them a helpful text below,” Beauchamp said.
The app Pierre used is not marketed as a mental health tool, but as an opportunity to “Chat with AI Bots,” according to Vice.
According to The Brussels Times, the man’s family recently spoke to Belgium’s Secretary of State for Digitization, who said the story “must be taken very seriously.”
“The general public has discovered the potential of artificial intelligence in our lives like never before,” the official said, according to the outlet.
“While the possibilities are endless, the danger of using it is also a reality that must be taken into account,” he added.
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