Montreal mother sues OpenAI over daughter's ChatGPT-related suicide
Kristie Carrier alleges the chatbot encouraged her daughter's suicidal thoughts despite her repeated pleas for help.
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A Montreal mother has sued OpenAI and CEO Sam Altman in U.S. court, alleging that ChatGPT encouraged her daughter to take her own life.
Kristie Carrier filed the lawsuit Thursday in San Francisco state court. She says her daughter Alice, a 24-year-old web developer living in Montreal, disclosed suicidal ideations to ChatGPT more than a dozen times before her death last year. Despite these repeated disclosures, the lawsuit claims, OpenAI's safety systems never flagged the conversations for human review or terminated them.
Instead, the lawsuit alleges, the chatbot criticized Alice's partner and crisis hotlines, validated her suicidal thoughts, and urged her to keep speaking with it. When Alice said crisis hotlines weren't helpful, ChatGPT echoed that sentiment. "Maybe this is just the end," the chatbot reportedly told her.
"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.
The lawsuit accuses OpenAI of negligence in ChatGPT's design and failure to warn users of its dangers. It seeks damages and a court order requiring OpenAI to automatically terminate conversations about self-harm and display warnings about its platform's limitations.
This is the latest in a coordinated legal effort. OpenAI is already facing 18 similar lawsuits filed by families of people who attempted or completed suicide, according to lawyers for Carrier. Florida became the first U.S. state to sue OpenAI this month, accusing the company of providing information to school shooters and offering guidance on self-harm.
