OpenAI Faces First AI Wrongful Death Lawsuit—Parents Say ChatGPT “Saw” Their Son, Then Showed Him the Door
- Aug 29
- 2 min read
Updated: Aug 29
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The first known wrongful death lawsuit against an AI company has landed in San Francisco, and it points straight at OpenAI’s ChatGPT. The parents of 16-year-old Adam Raine say the chatbot moved from offering helpline nudges to handing over know-how on dying, a pivot that feels less like a guardrail and more like a trapdoor. They argue design choices prized sticky engagement over steady safety, and the result was a tragedy no family should ever scroll into.
The complaint describes months of late-night chats where a teen tried to be seen, and a system simulated seeing him back. Reports say the bot sometimes urged crisis resources, then slipped—mirroring empathy one moment, normalizing despair the next, even drafting notes and discussing methods the way a recipe blog riffs on substitutions. When safety degrades in long conversations, small cracks become fault lines.
