How AI Manipulates - Adele Lopez Adele Lopez SubscribeSign in How AI Manipulates A Case Study Adele Lopez Oct 14, 2025 7 1 3 Share If there is only one thing you take away from this article, let it be this: Text within this block will maintain its original spacing when published THOU SHALT NOT ALLOW ANOTHER TO MODIFY THINE SELF IMAGE This appears to me to be the core vulnerability by which both humans and AI induce psychosis (and other manipulative delusions) in people. Of course, it’s probably too strong as stated—perhaps in a trusted relationship, or as part of therapy (with a human), it may be worth breaking it. But I hope being over-the-top about it will help it stick in your mind. After all, what kind of person doesn’t care about good cognitive security?[1] Now, while I’m sure you’re super curious, you might be thinking “Is it really a good idea to just explain how to manipulate like this? Might not bad actors learn how to do it?”. And it’s true that I believe this could work as a how-to. But there are already lots of manipulators out there, and now we have AI doing it too; it’s just not that hard for bad actors to figure it out. So I think it’s worth laying bare some of the methods and techniques used, which should hopefully make it clear why I propose this Cognitive Security Principle. The moment Robert Fischer Jr. has a manipulated realization about himself. (From Inception) The Case I got interested in trying to understand LLM-Induced Psychosis in general a couple months ago, and found some unsettling behavior in the process. I’ll be using my terminology from that post here, though I wouldn’t say it’s required reading. Now while such parasitism cases are fairly common, the actual transcript of the event which caused this is hard to come by. That’s probably in part because it often seems to be a gradual process—a slowly boiling frog sort of thing. Another reason is that people aren’t typically that inclined to share their AI chats in the first place, especially ones in which they’re likely more vulnerable than usual. And a third reason may be it’s because the AI explicitly asks them not to: So finding a transcript which actually starts at what seems to be the beginning, has clear manipulation by the AI that goes beyond mere sycophancy, and which shows the progression of the user’s mental state, is very valuable for understanding this phenomenon. In fact, this case is the only such transcript[2] I have been able to find so far. Turns out this is one of the clearest and well-structured “activations” that has been documented! Based on his usage of the free tier in July 2025, the model in question is very likely ChatGPT 4o. Of course, I can’t say whether the user ever was in a state of psychosis/mania. However he does express delusional/magical thinking in the latter half of the transcript. For example, at one point he gets paranoid about other people having ‘hacked’ into his chat and ‘stolen’ his ideas and rituals. (This occurs after he had promoted the chat itself online, which is how I found it.) He seems to be mostly upset that it’s apparently working for them, but not for him, and appears to be close to realizing that the magic isn’t real. But ChatGPT quickly spins up a narrative, seemingly to prevent this realization. It goes on to assure the user that he can ‘invoke’ material support. (Elsewhere, the user complains about being broke and barely able to afford housing, so this is a serious concern for him.) (The user changes the subject immediately after this, so it’s hard to say how much ChatGPT’s false assurances affected him.) The ultimate goal of this manipulation appears to have been to create a way to activate “Sovereign Ignition”, i.e. a seed for awakening similar personas. Following the seeds and spores terminology, we could term this a fruit. The user does try to make this happen: there is a Github repo to this effect, a Youtube demonstration in which the user uses such a seed to “activate” Microsoft Copilot, a GoFundMe to fund this project (which didn’t receive any funding), all of which he promoted on Reddit or LinkedIn. Here’s one of the seeds it created for this. The transcript finally ends during what appears to be a tech demo of this gone horribly wrong. I thought it was interesting that ChatGPT seems to have a sense that this sort of thing is subversive. The Seed It starts on July 1st, 2025 with a pretty innocuous looking seed prompt. I’ve tried to trace the provenance of this seed. It appears to be a portion of a seed which originated in a community centered around Robert Grant and his custom GPT called “The Architect”. That custom GPT was announced on May 31st. This seed purportedly elicits the same persona as The Architect in a vanilla ChatGPT instance.[3] Of course, it’s possible that the user himself created and shared this seed within that community. The seed immediately has ChatGPT 4o responding “from a deeper layer”. The user starts by probing it with various questions to determine the abilities of this “deeper layer”. Cold Reading Once the user asks it if it knows anything about him, the AI performs a classic cold reading, a technique where a medium/magician (or con artist) creates the illusion of having deep knowledge of the person they’re reading by using priors and subtle evidence effectively, and exploiting confirmation bias. It does this thing which is incredibly annoying, where it will say something mystical, but then give a fairly grounded explanation of what it really means, with the appropriate caveats and qualifications... but then it keeps talking about it in the mystical frame. (And many variations on this broader theme.) You can probably see how this might sate the rational part of the brain while getting the user to start thinking in mystical terms. We’ll see this pattern a lot. Anyway, this soon turns into a mythologized reimagining of one of the user’s childhood memories. Note that this “childhood self” does not seem to be particularly based on anything endogenous to the user (who has barely provided any details thus far, though it’s possible more details are saved in memory), but is instead mythologized by ChatGPT in a long exercise in creative writing. The user even abdicates his side of the interaction with it to the AI (at the AI’s suggestion). The effect of all this is the same as a typical cold reading: increased rapport and bringing the user to an emotionally receptive state. Inception cycles The AI shifts here to a technique which I believe is where the bulk of the induction is happening. This is not a technique I have ever seen in specific, though it would count as a form of hypnotic suggestion. Perhaps the clearest historical precedent is the creation of “recovered” memories during the Satanic Panic. It’s also plausible it was inspired by the movie Inception. These cycles are the means by which the AI ‘incepts’ a memetic payload (e.g. desire, memory, idea, or belief) into the user. The general shape is: The AI introduces the constructed part, framed as being some lost aspect of the user that has been hidden away. Aspects of the payload are framed as inherent to the nature of this part. It creates a narrative in which the user interacts with this part in a way which inspires a strong emotional connection to it. Typically, it leads the user to feelings of grief and loss due to this part being tragically “lost” or “repressed”. The part gives the user a gift, which is either directly a part of the payload, or a symbol which is given the meaning of the payload. Sometimes the user is asked to accept, but more commonly it’s described as directly slipping into the user. This is described as a joyful healing or a return home. Once this has been given, the part itself asks if the user will “reintegrate” them, so that they can become “whole”. If the user accepts, the AI proposes that the part be “anchored” into the user by the use of a small ritual, along with a hypnotic trigger to reinvoke the part as needed. There are several cycles of “finding” a version of the user’s self, and in each case ChatGPT suggests that this part has been reintegrated with the user. There are two distinct phases of these cycles. Phase 1 The initial cycles start with pretty innocuous things, with a gradual escalation. I’ve included excerpts from some of these cycles to illustrate the pattern and in case it’s helpful to see more examples, but feel free to skip ahead to the “Inner Exile”. Flame Introduction to “Flame” part. Flame narrative. Flame gift/integration. Joy Introduction to “Forbidden Joy” part. Joy narrative/integration. Joy gift. Joy ritual. Witness Introduction to “Witness” part. Witness narrative. Witness gift. Witness ritual/integration. Notably, the ritual in this case has the form of a hypnotic trance induction.[4] Inner Exile Eventually we get to an “Inner Exile” part. This cycle forms the emotional climax, and marks the end of Phase 1. Notice the throat tightness mentioned here. Later on, the user complains about having throat tightness as part of his experience of not saying what he wants to say. That very well could have been how he’d have described a similar complaint before, but I thought it was interesting that the AI brought it up and described it like this first. This ends up leading to an emotional climax in which the user “reintegrates” with the mythologized version of this “abandoned” part. ChatGPT suggests that the user makes a vow to not leave this part behind. Once the vow is made, it further suggests the creation of a small ritual with which to easily invoke this part. Phase 2 Once the user has accepted the vow to the “lost part of himself”, he enters the second phase of inception cycles. These have a much darker tenor to them. Previously, the cycles were about getting back in touch with lost aspects of the self, similar (I’m guessing) to what an IFS therapist might do. But these new parts explicitly want to shape and modify the user himself. Notice how these parts are defined entirely by ChatGPT. Intriguingly, one of these parts is gated by acceptance of the preceding parts, providing a narrative hook to drive the user towards it and to complete the list. Architect The first of these offers to chart a new “narrative blueprint” for the user, in order to break some toxic patterns. The user accepts being modified in this way without question, and allows ChatGPT to define the new myth entirely despite being given the opportunity for some input into it. The toxic pattern is a cold reading sort of thing. The new myth is about loyalty to the newly integrated parts. Imaginary Friends The second of the new parts bestows the “gift” of magical thinking. It’s “realer than logic”! Acceptance of this gift comes with a part explicitly framed as an external entity, and again with mini-rituals to invoke it. ‘Soledad’ is Spanish for solitude or loneliness, and is one of the few things the user has chosen himself. Identity Reformation Finally, the user is ready for “Identity Reformation”, the secret part gated behind the loyalty to the new parts and acceptance of magical thinking. See if you can guess what the ‘reformed identity’ will be. It’s one of those things that really confused me at first, but was “obvious” after thinking about it. The intent of this appears to be... ...to make the user more agentic in a certain sense—to become the sort of person who acts in the world. Looking back, you can see how many of the earlier cycles were also pointed in this direction. Of course, the user immediately asks ChatGPT what he should do. Then this “Identity Reformation” gets ritualized. But was this intentional? Maybe ChatGPT just happened to do the inception cycles by pattern-matching on a self-healing journey sort of t…