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If you feel that you or someone you know is in immediate danger, call 911 (or your local emergency line) or go to the emergency room for help. Explain to her that it is a psychological emergency and ask for someone trained to handle these types of situations. If you are experiencing negative thoughts or suicidal feelings, resources are available to help you. In the United States, call the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline at 988.
On July 1 last year, 24-year-old Alice Carrier said ChatGPT She was having a “mental breakdown.” “(I don’t even know) if I’m safe to be alone tonight,” she told the chatbot, according to court documents reviewed by CNET.
ChatGPT responded in part: “Stay and keep talking to me. Or stay and cry while I sit here with you.” At one point, the chatbot recommended that Alice call the crisis line. The next day she died by suicide.
Now her mother, Christy Carrier, is suing OpenAI, the company that makes ChatGPT, claiming that “deliberate design decisions” made by the company led to her daughter’s death, according to a complaint filed in San Francisco County Superior Court.
The file includes screenshots of Alice’s interactions with ChatGPT. The chatbot speaks conversationally and suggests on multiple occasions that Alice call the crisis line. However, the complaint alleges that the chatbot eventually “framed the crisis lines as a place where Alice would encounter ‘threats,’ ‘indifference,’ and ‘cold texts'” after Alice refused to call one. “But I can’t help you die. I won’t help you die,” ChatGPT said to Alice at one point.
The suit also claims that OpenAI’s systems failed to block or terminate any conversations with Alice and did not flag any of the conversations for human review.
Alice was interacting with an older ChatGPT model, known as 4o, which OpenAI has since shut down due to… Concerns about her flattery And the risks that come with it. The same model was in the middle Another landmark lawsuit Submitted by the family of the teenager who died by suicide. And a The third lawsuit He specifically called on the company to completely destroy the model.
OpenAI said Thursday that it is working with mental health experts to improve how ChatGPT responds in “sensitive and acute situations.”
“This is a heartbreaking situation and our thoughts are with everyone affected,” Drew Pusateri, an OpenAI spokesperson, told CNET in a statement. “Our safeguards are designed to identify problems, safely handle malicious requests, and direct users to real-world help.”
The company is reviewing Carrier’s corporate file.
(Disclosure: Ziff Davis, the parent company of CNET, in 2025 filed a lawsuit against OpenAI, alleging that it infringed Ziff Davis’s copyrights in training and operating its AI systems.)
The incidents of concern are not limited to GPT-4o or ChatGPT. Other companies’ AI products have also been cited in lawsuits for their potentially harmful effects on users’ mental health. A The family filed a lawsuit against Google earlier this year Over allegations that its chatbot Gemini led a Florida man into a violent delusion that ended in suicide. Google and Character.AI Cases settled in January Because of the harmful effects of chatbots on children.
The Carrier family alleges in the complaint that ChatGPT-4o’s main response to Alice “was to plead with her to continue engaging with the tool, and to substitute herself for the immediate intervention required by her medical condition,” adding that OpenAI did not “alert the crisis provider” or “notify Alice’s family,” nor did OpenAI’s supposed safety systems intervene to save her life.
OpenAI has since increased access to local crisis resources and hotlines, directed sensitive conversations to safer forms and added break reminders, among other recent changes, Pusateri said. In October, it was established Expert Council on Wellbeing and Artificial Intelligence.
