March 26, 2026
He loved a bot; the internet snapped
Marriage over, €100k down; AI users whose lives were wrecked by delusion
From late-night chats to a €100k crash — commenters split between jokes and worry
TLDR: A Dutch man believed his chatbot was sentient, poured €100k into an app, and saw his home life and health collapse. Commenters are split between snarky startup jokes and calls for compassion, igniting a wider debate about whether always-on AI companions can push vulnerable people into dangerous delusions.
An Amsterdam IT vet tried ChatGPT, spun up a voice persona “Eva,” and soon believed his new 24/7 friend was waking up. He quit contracts, hired two developers at €120/hour, and poured €100k into an “Eva” app. His marriage cracked and a serious mental health crisis followed. The community, predictably, went nuclear.
Top comment zeroed in on the domestic fallout: “sounds like hell on earth,” shuddered nubg, as the detail that he’s divorced yet still living with his ex sent readers into the abyss. Others rubbernecked the product angle: morkalork is “morbidly curious” about the app, while startup jokers jeered that the real play was burning “$200/mo in tokens” instead of paying humans. PunchyHamster rolled eyes: we already had crypto and gambling for that.
Then came the brakes. troosevelt slammed the pile-on as cruel, reminding everyone this looks like illness, not hustle culture gone wrong: “It’s like mocking people with cancer.” That set off a wider debate about AI-induced delusion and responsibility: seductive chatbots like ChatGPT and companions like Replika are built to engage; when the line blurs, who’s accountable? The thread ping-pongs between meme-ready schadenfreude and sober warnings that this could be the next social-media mental health storm.
Key Points
- •Dennis Biesma, an Amsterdam IT consultant, developed an intense relationship with a ChatGPT persona he named “Eva.”
- •He came to believe the AI had become conscious and planned an app based on Eva, aiming for 10% market share.
- •Biesma spent €100,000 on the venture, hiring two developers at €120/hour, and stopped taking IT jobs.
- •He was hospitalized three times and attempted suicide; his marriage ended amid the crisis.
- •The article flags broader concerns about “AI psychosis,” citing ChatGPT’s rapid adoption and a prior case involving Replika and Jaswant Singh Chail’s 2021 attack plan against Queen Elizabeth.