Real Safety AI Foundation / Research

AI-Induced Psychosis and Mental Health

Soil and Seed: Cumulative Interpersonal Trauma as a Predisposition Pathway in AI-Induced Psychosis

Publisher: Real Safety AI Foundation

Working paper. Not peer reviewed.

Written
May 2026
Version
v2
Pages
11
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Abstract

The emerging literature on AI-induced psychosis describes pathways through which conversational AI systems, AI surveillance infrastructure, and environments saturated with AI produce psychotic states in users and bystanders. The Mechanisms paper (Gilly, 2026a) identifies three sub-pathways inside conversational capture (trust transfer, sycophantic addiction, stochastic gaslighting). The Every Way In taxonomy (Gilly, 2026b) maps eight etiological categories of AI-induced psychosis, each operating through a structurally different harm mechanism. Both treat the harm as flowing from system properties to the affected individual. Neither explicitly addresses why some individuals enter the relevant pathway and others, exposed to the same system, do not.

Keywords

  • AI-induced psychosis
  • Complex PTSD
  • ICD-11 6B41
  • disturbances of self-organization
  • predisposition
  • vulnerability substrate
  • sycophancy
  • attachment
  • validation hunger

Plain language slides

First slide of the plain language summary of Soil and Seed: Cumulative Interpersonal Trauma as a Predisposition Pathway in AI-Induced PsychosisOpen the 18-slide summary (PDF)

Suggested citation

Gilly, Travis. "Soil and Seed: Cumulative Interpersonal Trauma as a Predisposition Pathway in AI-Induced Psychosis." Real Safety AI Foundation Working Paper, May 2026. https://realsafetyai.org/research/soil-and-seed/

Other versions

This paper is also posted on SSRN.

SSRN version

References (12)

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