Spiral | Tortoise Investigates

When The Observer’s Technology Editor, Patricia Clarke began investigating a new phenomenon initially dubbed ‘AI psychosis’, she found lives upended by long, intimate conversations with chatbots. But as she followed the evidence from a psychiatric ward in Bristol to the safety teams in Silicon Valley, a far darker story emerged.

Guided by AI industry whistleblowers, grieving families and hundreds of pages of chatbot transcripts, Spiral exposes how big tech is running an unprecedented experiment on the human mind.

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Reported by Ashley John-Baptiste and Madeleine Parr

Produced and written by Madeleine Parr

Sound design by Simon Panayi

Artwork by Jon Hill

The editor is Jasper Corbett

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