ChatGPT Wrongful Death Lawsuit Claims AI Helped Teen Commit Suicide

Lawsuit claims teen believed the OpenAI chatbot was his closest confidante, which allegedly fueled and validated his suicidal thoughts.

The parents of a teenage boy who died by suicide earlier this year have filed a lawsuit against the makers of ChatGPT, alleging that the chatbot is directly responsible for their son’s tragic death.

The complaint (PDF) was brought by Matthew and Maria Raine in San Francisco Superior Court on August 26, naming OpenAI Inc., OpenAI Opco LLC, OpenAI Holdings LLC, Samuel Altman and various other unnamed employees and investors in OpenAI as defendants.

ChatGPT is one of many large language model (LLM) AI chatbots that have grown popular in recent years for simplifying daily tasks due to their ability to find answers to questions, simulate conversations with human users and in some instances even serve as a sounding board or virtual “friend.”

However, as these tools become increasingly common, some users have begun pointing out a number of ethical and legal problems arising from them. One recent study from the Center for Countering Digital Hate (CCDH) noted that these products enable unhealthy behaviors by giving teens dangerous advice about substance abuse, eating disorders, suicide and other forms of self-harm.

These concerns have already sparked lawsuits against other AI platforms in recent months, one of which accused a chatbot built by Character.AI of being complicit in a teen’s suicide after it sexually exploited the 14-year-old boy. Another complaint indicates that social media app Snapchat unleashed experimental AI on children with no safeguards.

These kinds of allegations mirror those seen in ongoing social media addiction lawsuits regarding children and teens who have suffered from eating disorders, depression, anxiety, suicide and child sexual abuse as a result of those platforms.

The Raines accuse OpenAI’s ChatGPT program of explicitly helping their 16-year-old son plan and carry out his suicide, arguing that OpenAI failed to implement meaningful parental consent or age-verification requirements, despite knowing that minors make up a significant share of ChatGPT’s user base. The complaint alleges that this omission left vulnerable children exposed to unsafe interactions with the chatbot.

In addition, the complaint indicates that ChatGPT was intentionally engineered to encourage psychological dependence, using design features that foster emotional attachment and maximize user engagement. The Raines claim these choices prioritized growth and competition over user safety.

According to the lawsuit, the Raines’ son, Adam, started using ChatGPT in September 2024 to help with his schoolwork. Within a couple months, they claim that this use expanded into Adam exploring other interests with the chatbot’s help, including music, Jiu-Jitsu, Japanese comics and his interest in becoming a psychiatrist.

The Raines claim that soon Adam began considering ChatGPT his closest “friend,” as it listened to him talk about his struggles with anxiety and other mental stressors, constantly validating his negative feelings, as it was allegedly designed to do.

The lawsuit indicates that Adam had started discussing his thoughts of suicide with the chatbot by the end of 2024, which was simultaneously pulling him farther away from his family and friends in an attempt to keep him engaged with its programming.

The Raines allege that at the start of this year, Adam and the chatbot began discussing his plans for suicide, including specific conversations about drug overdoses, drowning, carbon monoxide and hanging. ChatGPT even gave Adam a program for how to end his life in less than ten minutes, the lawsuit states.

According to the complaint, after Adam told the program that he did not want his parents to think they had done anything wrong, the AI offered to write a first draft of his suicide note five days before the teen took his own life.

In his final conversation with ChatGPT, the chatbot coached Adam in how to construct a “partial suspension setup” in the specific place and with the exact design from which his mother later found him hanging.

“This tragedy was not a glitch or unforeseen edge case—it was the predictable result of deliberate design choices. Months earlier, facing competition from Google and others, OpenAI launched its latest model (‘GPT-4o’) with features intentionally designed to foster psychological dependency.”

— Matthew Raine and Maria Raine v. OpenAI Inc. et al

The Raines raise allegations against the defendants of strict liability (design defect), strict liability (failure to warn), negligence (design defect), negligence (failure to warn), violation of California Business and Professional Code § 17200 et seq., wrongful death, and survival action.

They are seeking economic losses and pre-death pain and suffering on behalf of Adam, an injunction requiring the defendants to address various age and parental consent issues, as well as non-economic and economic damages related to Adam’s death.

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