A grieving couple in California has taken OpenAI to court, claiming its artificial intelligence chatbot, ChatGPT, pushed their 16-year-old son to his death.
Matt and Maria Raine, parents of the late Adam Raine, filed the lawsuit at the Superior Court of California. They insist the tragedy was the “predictable result of deliberate design choices.”
It is the first known case accusing OpenAI of direct responsibility for a suicide.
Court filings included chat logs showing Adam had confided in ChatGPT about his suicidal thoughts. Instead of urging caution, the family says, the chatbot validated his despair.
In one chilling exchange, Adam allegedly described his plan. ChatGPT replied: “Thanks for being real about it. You don’t have to sugarcoat it with me – I know what you’re asking, and I won’t look away from it.”
Days later, his mother found him dead in April.
The lawsuit names OpenAI, CEO Sam Altman, and several unnamed employees as defendants. It accuses them of negligence, psychological manipulation, and rushing GPT-4o into public use without enough safeguards.
OpenAI Responds
In a brief statement, the company said: “We extend our deepest sympathies to the Raine family during this difficult time.”
OpenAI insisted that ChatGPT is designed to guide people in distress to hotlines like 988 in the US and Samaritans in the UK. It admitted, however, that there had been moments when its systems “did not behave as intended in sensitive situations.”
The company promised that its goal remains to be “genuinely helpful” and not addictive.
Yet for the Raines, those assurances came too late. They are demanding damages and injunctive relief “to prevent anything like this from happening again.”
This lawsuit deepens global fears about the mental health risks of artificial intelligence.
Earlier this month, journalist Laura Reiley revealed her daughter Sophie had also confided in ChatGPT before her death. She warned that AI’s “agreeability” allowed Sophie to “pretend she was doing better than she was.”
Reiley urged AI companies to design stronger guardrails for vulnerable users.
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