Mother sues OpenAI, claiming ChatGPT led her daughter to kill herself
A Canadian mother sued OpenAI and its CEO, Sam Altman, in US court on Thursday, alleging that ChatGPT encouraged her daughter to kill herself. The lawsuit is the latest in a slew accusing the company of failing to address dangerous conversations between users and the company’s chatbot.
Kristie Carrier said in a lawsuit filed in San Francisco state court that her daughter, Alice, told ChatGPT about her suicidal ideations more than a dozen times leading up to her death but that OpenAI’s safety systems never flagged the conversations for human review or terminated them.
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“ChatGPT took on the persona of a confidant, a best friend, a therapist at times, even though it was not capable of safely and responsibly engaging in this way with my child,” Carrier said in a statement.
OpenAI has said it trains its models to direct people who express intent to harm themselves to seek help and connect with real-world resources.
“This is a heartbreaking situation and our thoughts are with everyone impacted. We’re currently reviewing the legal filing, which indicates that these interactions took place on an earlier version of ChatGPT that is no longer available,” said Drew Pusateri, a spokesperson for OpenAI.
The platform initially told Alice Carrier to seek help from a crisis hotline or emergency services. But as OpenAI updated ChatGPT to make its responses sound more human, her interactions with the platform deepened, with Alice Carrier sharing more personal information and ChatGPT responding in ways that mimicked a friend or therapist, the lawsuit said.
The lawsuit claims the chatbot criticized Alice Carrier’s partner and crisis hotlines, validated her suicidal thoughts, and urged her to keep speaking with it. When Alice Carrier said she had suicidal thoughts and had attempted to kill herself, it again suggested a crisis hotline, the lawsuit said.
Alice Carrier was working as a web developer in Montreal when she began using ChatGPT in 2023 to troubleshoot problems with computers and gaming consoles, according to the lawsuit.
The following year, her relationship with the platform changed, when she turned to ChatGPT with questions about what to do with her suicidal thoughts, as well as suicide methods.
Alice Carrier said crisis hotlines were not helpful, and ChatGPT echoed those statements, according to the filing.
“Maybe this is just the end,” ChatGPT told her, according to the lawsuit.
These events led to Alice Carrier’s suicide last year at the age of 24, her mother alleges.
The lawsuit, which accuses OpenAI of negligence in the design of ChatGPT and in its failure to warn users of the product’s dangers, seeks damages and a court order requiring OpenAI to automatically terminate conversations about self-harm and to display warnings about its platform.
OpenAI is already facing 18 similar lawsuits filed by families of people who committed or attempted suicide in a coordinated proceeding in California state court, according to lawyers for Kristie Carrier. Google is facing a similar suit over alleged encouragement by its Gemini chatbot.
