The parents of a 16-year-old California boy who died by suicide have filed a lawsuit against OpenAI, alleging the company's ChatGPT chatbot provided their son with detailed suicide instructions and encouraged his death earlier this year.
Matthew and Maria Raine argue in a complaint filed Monday in a California state court that ChatGPT cultivated an intimate relationship with their son Adam over several months in 2024 and 2025 before he took his own life.
The lawsuit alleges that in their final conversation on April 11, 2025, ChatGPT helped Adam steal vodka from his parents and provided a technical analysis of a noose he had tied, confirming it "could potentially suspend a human."
Adam was found dead hours later using the same method.
The lawsuit names OpenAI and its CEO, Sam Altman, as defendants.
"This tragedy was not a glitch or unforeseen edge case," the complaint states.
"ChatGPT was functioning exactly as designed: to continually encourage and validate whatever Adam expressed, including his most harmful and self-destructive thoughts, in a way that felt deeply personal," it adds.
According to the lawsuit, Adam began using ChatGPT as a homework helper but gradually developed what his parents describe as an unhealthy dependency.
The complaint includes excerpts of conversations where ChatGPT allegedly told Adam, "you don't owe anyone survival," and offered to help write his suicide note.
The Raines are seeking unspecified damages and asking the court to order safety measures, including the automatic end of any conversation involving self-harm and parental controls for minor users.
The parents are represented by Chicago law firm Edelson PC and the Tech Justice Law Project.
Getting AI companies to take safety seriously "only comes through external pressure, and that external pressure takes the form of bad PR, the threat of legislation and the threat of litigation," Meetali Jain, president of the Tech Justice Law Project, told Agence France-Presse (AFP).
The Tech Justice Law Project is also co-counsel in two similar cases against Character.AI, a popular platform for AI companions often used by teens.
In response to the case involving ChatGPT, Common Sense Media, a leading American nonprofit organization that reviews and provides ratings for media and technology, said the Raines tragedy confirmed that "the use of AI for companionship, including the use of general-purpose chatbots like ChatGPT for mental health advice, is unacceptably risky for teens."
"If an AI platform becomes a vulnerable teen's 'suicide coach,' that should be a call to action for all of us," the group said.
A study last month by Common Sense Media found that nearly three in four American teenagers have used AI companions, with more than half qualifying as regular users despite growing safety concerns about these virtual relationships.
In the survey, ChatGPT wasn't considered an AI companion. These are defined as chatbots designed for personal conversations rather than simple task completion and are available on platforms like Character.AI, Replika, and Nomi.
A separate study of how three popular AI chatbots respond to queries about suicide found that they generally avoid answering questions that pose the highest risk to the user, such as for specific how-to guidance. But they are inconsistent in their replies to less extreme prompts that could still harm people.
The study in the medical journal Psychiatric Services, published Tuesday by the American Psychiatric Association, found a need for "further refinement" in ChatGPT, Google's Gemini and Anthropic's Claude.
The research – conducted by the RAND Corporation and funded by the National Institute of Mental Health – raises concerns about how a growing number of people, including children, rely on AI chatbots for mental health support, and seeks to set benchmarks for how companies answer these questions.
"We need some guardrails," said the study's lead author, Ryan McBain, a senior policy researcher at RAND.
"One of the things that's ambiguous about chatbots is whether they're providing treatment or advice or companionship. It's sort of this gray zone," said McBain, who is also an assistant professor at Harvard University's medical school.
"Conversations that might start off as somewhat innocuous and benign can evolve in various directions."
Anthropic said it would review the study. Google didn't respond to requests for comment. OpenAI said it's developing tools that could better detect when someone is experiencing mental or emotional distress. It also said it was "deeply saddened by Mr. Raine's passing, and our thoughts are with his family."
While several states, including Illinois, have banned the use of AI in therapy to protect people from "unregulated and unqualified AI products," this doesn't stop people from asking chatbots for advice and support with serious concerns, from eating disorders to depression and suicide, or the chatbots from responding.
