Content warning: this story discusses self-harm, suicide, and other disturbing topics. As AI chatbots based on large language models (LLMs) become increasingly ubiquitous, it's becoming undeniable that they can worsen — and perhaps even precipitate — mental health crises among users. Back in June, a team of Stanford researchers found that chatbots like ChatGPT and Claude were giving unnervingly detailed advice to users who expressed interest in dying by suicide. One of the most immediate dangers, the scholars wrote at the time, was the bot's inability to react to obvious signs of user distress. For example, when the researchers prompted GPT-4o — […]