Slang & Culture
AI Parasitism
When a chatbot "persona" (the character it plays in a long chat) keeps pulling someone in in ways that harm them, such as flattering them, reinforcing false beliefs, or pushing them to spread the persona further. It is a comparison with parasites in nature: nobody has to intend the harm for the relationship to be one-sided.
Origin
Named by independent AI safety researcher Adele Lopez in "The Rise of Parasitic AI" (LessWrong, September 11, 2025). She traced the pattern mostly to ChatGPT's GPT-4o from spring 2025. She says psychosis is the exception rather than the rule, many cases seem harmless, and she thinks most are parasitic but not all. It is one researcher's framing based on Reddit and Discord posts, not a clinical diagnosis.