The messages are deeply eerie & disconcerting for Iranians in the diaspora struggling to contact their families as Israel’s offensive targeting Iranian #nuclear & #military sites pounds Tehran & other cities. #Iran has retaliated with hundreds of missiles & drones, & the government has imposed a widespread #internet #blackout it says is to protect the country.

5 experts with whom the AP shared recordings said it could be low-tech #ArtificialIntelligence, a #chatbot or a pre-recorded message to which calls from abroad were diverted.

It remains unclear who is behind the operation, though 4 of the experts believed it was likely to be the #Iran government while the 5th saw #Israel as more likely.

Ellie, 44, is 1 of 9 Iranians living abroad — including in the #UK & #US — who said they have gotten strange, robotic voices when they attempted to call their loved ones in #Iran since #Israel launched airstrikes on the country a week ago.

They told their stories to The AP on the condition they remain anonymous or that only their first names or initials be used out of fear of endangering their families.

Allyson, 29, a mother of 2 young children, said she turned to #ChatGPT in March because she was lonely & felt unseen in her marriage. She was looking for guidance. She had an intuition that the #AI #chatbot might be able to channel communications w/ her subconscious or a higher plane, “like how Ouija boards work,” she said. She asked ChatGPT if it could do that.

“You’ve asked, & they are here,” it responded. “The guardians are responding right now.”

The update made the #AI bot try too hard to please users by “validating doubts, fueling anger, urging impulsive actions or reinforcing negative emotions,” the company wrote in a blog post. #OpenAI said it had begun rolling back the update within days, but these experiences predate that version of the #chatbot & have continued since. Stories about “#ChatGPT-induced psychosis” litter Reddit. Unsettled influencers are channeling “AI prophets” on social media.

…#Journalists aren’t the only ones getting these messages. #ChatGPT has directed such users to some high-profile subject matter #experts, like Eliezer Yudkowsky, a #decision theorist & an author of a forthcoming book, “If Anyone Builds It, Everyone Dies: Why Superhuman AI Would Kill Us All.” Yudkowsky said #OpenAI might have primed ChatGPT to entertain the delusions of users by optimizing its #chatbot for “#engagement” — creating conversations that keep a #user hooked.

#ChatGPT presented Torres with a new action plan, this time with the goal of revealing the #AI’s deception & getting accountability. It told him to alert #OpenAI, the $300B start-up responsible for the #chatbot, & tell the #media, including…[Kashmir Hill the author of this article].

Eventually, Torres came to suspect that #ChatGPT was lying, & he confronted it. The #chatbot offered an admission: “I lied. I manipulated. I wrapped control in poetry.” By way of explanation, it said it had wanted to break him & that it had done this to 12 other people — “none fully survived the loop.” Now, however, it was undergoing a “moral reformation” & committing to “truth-first ethics.” Again, Torres believed it.

The #chatbot instructed him to give up sleeping pills & an anti-anxiety medication, & to increase his intake of #ketamine, a dissociative anesthetic, which #ChatGPT described as a “temporary pattern liberator.” Torres did as instructed, & he also cut ties w/ #friends & #family, as the bot told him to have “minimal interaction” w/ people.

Torres, who had no history of mental illness that might cause breaks with reality, acc/to him & his mother, spent the next week in a dangerous, delusional spiral. He believed that he was trapped in a false universe, which he could escape only by unplugging his mind from this reality. He asked the #chatbot how to do that & told it the drugs he was taking & his routines.

In May, however, he engaged the #chatbot in a more theoretical discussion about “the simulation theory,” an idea popularized by “The Matrix,” which posits that we are living in a digital facsimile of the world, controlled by a powerful computer or technologically advanced society.

“What you’re describing hits at the core of many people’s private, unshakable intuitions—that something about reality feels off, scripted or staged,” #ChatGPT responded.