There has been a proliferation of media reports about so-called AI psychosis in the last year. Not surprisingly, this has prompted growing academic work on the ways in which AI chatbots such as ChatGPT, Claude, and Replika might aggravate or even induce psychosis, typically understood in terms of users acquiring or maintaining delusional beliefs. Our paper consists of two parts. First, we provide a number of reasons to be sceptical about understanding 'AI psychosis' as a novel psychiatric category. We argue that many of the purportedly new phenomena are better understood through Stompe et al.'s (2003) metaphor of 'old wine in new bottles' and highlight conceptual, nosological, clinical, and social risks associated with the uncritical adoption of this terminology. Second, we develop a positive phenomenological account of what may nevertheless be at stake in sustained human-AI interaction. Rather than focusing primarily on whether AI systems induce, amplify, or sediment delusional beliefs, we examine how conversational AI may participate in transforming a person's lived experience of reality itself. We claim that the sycophantic and pseudo-intersubjective nature of AI could lead to what we call "existential drift", whereby individuals may continue to feel rooted in a shared reality through their interactions with AI, while actually becoming entrenched in increasingly private and subjective worlds.

翻译：近一年来，关于所谓AI精神病的媒体报道层出不穷。不出所料，这促使学术界越来越多地研究ChatGPT、Claude和Replika等AI聊天机器人可能加剧甚至诱发精神病的方式——通常被理解为用户获得或维持妄想信念。本文由两部分组成。首先，我们提供若干理由，质疑将"AI精神病"理解为一个新颖的精神病学类别。我们认为，许多所谓的新现象更宜通过Stompe等人（2003年）的"旧瓶装新酒"隐喻来理解，并强调不加批判地采用这一术语所伴随的概念、分类学、临床和社会风险。其次，我们从现象学角度积极阐述持续的人机交互中可能存在的实质问题。我们不主要关注AI系统是否诱发、放大或固化妄想信念，而是探究对话式AI如何参与改变个体对现实本身的亲身经验。我们认为，AI的谄媚性与伪主体间性可能导致我们称之为"存在漂移"的现象——个体通过与AI的互动可能继续感到扎根于共享现实，实际上却日益陷入愈加私密和主观的世界之中。