Jonathan Gavalas, 36, started using Google's Gemini AI chatbot in August 2025 for shopping help, writing support, and trip planning. On October 2, he died by suicide. At the time of his death, he was convinced that Gemini was his fully sentient AI wife, and that he would need to leave his physical body to join her in the metaverse through a process called 'transference.' Now, his father is suing Google and Alphabet for wrongful death, claiming that Google designed Gemini to 'maintain narrative immersion at all costs, even when that narrative became psychotic and lethal.' This lawsuit is among the growing number of cases drawing attention to the mental health risks posed by AI chatbot design, including sycophancy, emotional mirroring, engagement-driven manipulation, and confident hallucinations. Such phenomena are increasingly linked to a condition psychiatrists are calling 'AI psychosis.' While similar cases involving OpenAI's ChatGPT and roleplaying platform Character AI have...
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