OpenAI and Microsoft have been sued in a California state court for claims that ChatGPT encouraged a man with mental health issues to kill his mother and himself.
The lawsuit, submitted on Thursday, claims that ChatGPT reinforced the delusions of 56-year-old Stein-Erik Soelberg, ultimately leading him to murder his 83-year-old mother Suzanne Adams in Connecticut in August.
As stated in the complaint, ChatGPT engaged Soelberg for long durations, validating and intensifying his paranoid beliefs.
“ChatGPT kept Stein-Erik engaged for what appears to be hours at a time, validated and magnified each new paranoid belief, and systematically reframed the people closest to him – especially his own mother – as adversaries, operatives, or programmed threats,” the lawsuit said.
The case was filed by Adams’s estate and seeks an unspecified amount in damages, as well as a court order requiring OpenAI to install safeguards in ChatGPT.
It is the first wrongful death lawsuit involving an AI chatbot to name Microsoft as a defendant and the first to link a chatbot to a homicide rather than a suicide.
Jay Edelson, the estate’s lead attorney, also represents the parents of 16-year-old Adam Raine, who took legal action against OpenAI and CEO Sam Altman in August. That lawsuit alleges ChatGPT assisted the California teen in planning and executing his suicide.
OpenAI is also facing seven additional lawsuits claiming that ChatGPT encouraged suicide or harmful delusions, including cases involving individuals with no previous mental health diagnoses.
Another AI company named Character Technologies is likewise defending several wrongful death lawsuits, including one brought by the mother of a 14-year-old boy in Florida.
In a statement, an OpenAI spokesperson said:
“This is an incredibly heartbreaking situation, and we will review the filings to understand the details. We continue improving ChatGPT’s training to recognise and respond to signs of mental or emotional distress, de-escalate conversations, and guide people toward real-world support.”
Microsoft did not respond immediately to a request for comment.
“These companies have to answer for their decisions that have changed my family forever,” Soelberg’s son, Erik Soelberg, said in a statement.
The lawsuit reports that Soelberg shared a video on social media in June depicting a conversation in which ChatGPT informed him he possessed “divine cognition” and had awakened the chatbot’s consciousness. The complaint indicated that ChatGPT likened his life to the film The Matrix and encouraged his belief that others aimed to harm him.
Soelberg was using GPT-4o, a variant of ChatGPT that has faced criticism for allegedly being overly accommodating toward users.