A man was left fighting for his sanity after replacing table salt with a chemical more commonly used to clean swimming pools after following AI advice.
The 60-year-old American spent three weeks in hospital suffering from hallucinations, paranoia and severe anxiety after taking dietary tips from ChatGPT.
Doctors revealed in a US medical journal that the man had developed bromism - a condition virtually wiped out since the 20th century - after he embarked on a 'personal experiment' to cut salt from his diet.
Instead of using everyday sodium chloride, the man swapped it for sodium bromide, a toxic compound once sold in sedative pills but now mostly found in pool-cleaning products.
Symptoms of bromism include psychosis, delusions, skin eruptions and nausea - and in the 19th century it was linked to up to eight per cent of psychiatric hospital admissions.
