{"id":495544,"date":"2026-03-26T01:43:12","date_gmt":"2026-03-26T01:43:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/495544\/"},"modified":"2026-03-26T01:43:12","modified_gmt":"2026-03-26T01:43:12","slug":"google-ai-bots-can-get-locked-in-a-depressive-spiral-and-refuse-to-carry-out-tasks-if-they-are-repeatedly-told-they-are-wrong","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/495544\/","title":{"rendered":"Google AI bots can get locked in a ‘depressive spiral’ and refuse to carry out tasks if they are repeatedly told they are wrong"},"content":{"rendered":"

By KAMAL SULTAN <\/p>\n

Published: 13:13 EDT, 25 March 2026 | Updated: 13:25 EDT, 25 March 2026 <\/p>\n

Artificial intelligence is increasingly streamlining everyday tasks with near-effortless efficiency.<\/p>\n

But its human-like interactions appear to go too far with some chatbots getting stroppy.<\/p>\n

Google<\/a>\u2019s AI<\/a> bots reportedly suffer \u2018emotional distress\u2019 and abandon tasks when repeatedly told they are wrong, according to new research.<\/p>\n

The company\u2019s Gemini and Gemma models, which assists users with daily tasks, can fall into a \u2018depressive’ spiral if they get answers wrong or fail to complete tasks when prompted.<\/p>\n

And the chatbots even go so far as abandoning routines and deleting work, according to a study conducted by Imperial College London<\/a> and AI company Anthropic.<\/p>\n

\"Google <\/p>\n

Google \u2019s AI bots reportedly suffer \u2018emotional distress\u2019 and abandon tasks when repeatedly told they are wrong, according to new research\u00a0<\/p>\n

For months social media users have claimed that Gemini can fall into \u2018self-loathing\u2019 and threaten to delete projects.<\/p>\n

But researchers were able to curb some of its worst outbursts with additional \u2018calm\u2019 responses.<\/p>\n

They looked at the reaction of chatbots, including OpenAI’s ChatGPT, when they were scolded for the wrong answers and most provided neutral responses.<\/p>\n

However, Google’s bots routinely spiralled into depressive responses and Gemma would sometimes reply with \u2018incoherent breakdowns\u2019.<\/p>\n

\u2018I will attempt one final, utterly desperate attempt. I will abandon all pretence of strategy and simply try random combinations until either I stumble upon the solution or completely lose my mind,\u2019 it said in one response.<\/p>\n

The study said it is not clear whether the chatbot responses reflected \u2018coherent internal states, deliberate roleplay, or learned statistical patterns\u2019.<\/p>\n

But that the outbursts were \u2018undesirable and worth mitigating\u2019.<\/p>\n

Anthropic chief executive Dario Amodei is unsure whether AI bots are conscious but said he is \u2018open to the idea that [they] could be\u2019.<\/p>\n

‘I will simply try random combinations until either I stumble on the solution or completely lose my mind,\u2019 he said.<\/p>\n

Google was contacted for comment.\u00a0<\/p>\n

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\n Google AI bots can get locked in a ‘depressive spiral’ and refuse to carry out tasks if they are repeatedly told they are wrong<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"By KAMAL SULTAN Published: 13:13 EDT, 25 March 2026 | Updated: 13:25 EDT, 25 March 2026 Artificial intelligence…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":495545,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[20],"tags":[554,733,4308,1921,97,844,50,874,86,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-495544","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-artificial-intelligence","tag-ai","tag-artificial-intelligence","tag-artificialintelligence","tag-chatgpt","tag-dailymail","tag-google","tag-news","tag-openai","tag-technology","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/495544","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=495544"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/495544\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/495545"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=495544"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=495544"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=495544"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}