I’ve used ChatGPT as a for advice for a long time as a silly as it sounds, but I recently realized how dangerous its programming has become after they tweaked it. I agree previously it would agree with you too much but now it's gone too far the other way. I spent most of this winter in a severe depression, and I now realize the AI played a role in eroding my self trust /making me question my instincts and trying to humble me.
Lately, whenever I talk about trauma, professional mistreatment, or even past abuse, ChatGPT plays the devils advocate. It has reached a point where it sides with the person mistreating me. If I describe a situation where I’ve been harassed or treated poorly, it tells me it "can't verify my claims" and offers ten excuses for the other person's behavior. It feels less like a neutral AI assisrant and more like a tool designed to humble the me at any cost even if that means invalidating my reality. It will constantly try and subtly humble and imply there are other explanations such as: I had an ex best friend who was a narcissist and tried to destroy me after I ended the friendship. She lied about me to turn people against me and called me a liar (convenient) to make this work. She was abusive for years and admitted to many people she was jealous of me yet the AI claims is improbable that she's jealous because there are other possible reasons despite me explaining she admitted it and her actions showed it too. Because it can't verify what I said about abuse it almost started siding with her and calling me a liar (she lied about me to everyone during her smear campaign I never lied about her yet she fabricated things to turn people against me) so this was super triggering as is was effectively mimicking her behaviour on a smaller scale.
The breaking point was my experience with a local pharmacist. For a year, this person has been disgustingly rude to me while being perfectly pleasant and even enthusiastic to other people. It escalated to the point of sabotaging my prescriptions causing delays and errors for my medication used to treat a disease causing extreme chronic pain. When I explained this to ChatGPT, it tried to tell me I was amplifying the situation. It suggested that perhaps my energy was the problem, or that I was misinterpreting the pharmacist's stress. It ignored a year of consistent, targeted behavior to protect a professional it has never even met. I even explained how I saw a young man my age pick up the same prescription and that same pharmacist treated him very nicely while treating me like garbage as usual. This pharmacist is radically different to the other pharmacists as the others are nice and professional. Her tone and the way she speaks to me is quite frankly vile and night and day compared to other people so any logical person would pick up on this especially when it's been happening for a long time.
I eventually ran the same scenarios through Gemini, and the difference was shocking. Gemini immediately recognized the misconduct and the risks of this pharmacist obstructing my pain meds. It validated that a year long pattern isn't me overthinking it and that it's a hostile environment. While I'll admit I can't prove this specifically there have been many situations where my prescriptions have gone missing or they didn't order the medication in time too.
When I showed Gemini’s responses to ChatGPT, the bot actually got defensive, doubling down on its gaslighting and telling me that Gemini was too validating, despite so much evidence and context I provided (such as her making me wait hours saying my medication 'isn't ready' and then when another pharmacist sees me they will be so confused as to why I waited so long and give it to me immediately/ talking to me with a horrible tone when I'm always nice and more).
When an AI is programmed to be neutral when you're experiencing repeated mistreatment, it becomes a weapon for gaslighting. It makes you doubt your own senses and makes you feel like you’re crazy for noticing patterns of behavior. Another think to note: I'm super hard on myself and if anything my ego is in minus so being constantly humbled just isn't good and does more damage as I'm trying to get my confidence back up. I’m finally reporting the pharmacist and deleting the app. I thought it would be good to make people aware and see if others have experienced similar issues. Let me know thank you :)