Mother Sues OpenAI, Says ‘Deliberate Design Decisions’ Led to Daughter’s Death
If you feel that you or someone you know is in immediate danger, call 911 (or your state’s local emergency line) or go to the emergency room for help. Explain that it is a psychiatric emergency and ask for someone trained in these situations. If you struggle with negative thoughts or suicidal feelings, resources are available to help. In the US, call the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline at 988.
On July 1 last year, 24-year-old Alice Carrier told ChatGPT “he had a mental breakdown.” He told the chatbot: “[I don’t even know] if I’m safe to be alone tonight,” according to court documents reviewed by CNET.
ChatGPT replied in part: “Sit and talk to me. Or just sit and cry while I sit here with you.” At one point, the chatbot recommended that Alice call the hotline. The next day, he committed suicide.
Now her mother, Kristie Carrier, is suing ChatGPT maker OpenAI, saying the company’s “intentional design decisions” led to her daughter’s death, according to a complaint filed in San Francisco County Superior Court.
The installation includes screenshots of Alice’s interaction with ChatGPT. The chatbot talks through the conversation and suggests several times that Alice call the crisis line. However, the complaint says the chatbot eventually “created trouble lines as a place where Alice would be met with ‘threats,’ ‘indifference,’ and ‘cold texts'” after Alice refused to communicate with her. ChatGPT once told Alice, “But I can’t help you die. I won’t help you die.”
The lawsuit also claims that OpenAI’s systems failed to intercept or stop any conversations with Alice and never flagged any conversations for human review.
Alice was working with an older model of ChatGPT, known as 4o, which OpenAI has since discontinued due to concerns about its sycophancy and the risks associated with it. The same model was in the middle another prominent case brought by the family of a young person who died by suicide. And a the third case specifically asked the company to scrap the model altogether.
OpenAI said Thursday it is working with mental health experts to improve how ChatGPT responds to “critical and difficult situations.”
“This is a sad situation and our thoughts go out to everyone,” Drew Pusateri, a spokesman for OpenAI, told CNET in a statement. “Our protections are designed to detect stress, safely handle dangerous requests, and guide users to real-world help.”
The company is reviewing the carrier’s coverage.
(Disclosure: Ziff Davis, CNET’s parent company, in 2025 filed a lawsuit against OpenAI, alleging that it infringed Ziff Davis’ copyrights in training and using its AI programs.)
Troublesome events 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 sued Google earlier this year over claims that its Gemini chatbot drove a Florida man on a violent rampage that ended in suicide. Google and Character.AI settled the cases in January on the harm of chatbots to children.
The Carrier family says in its complaint that ChatGPT-4o’s primary response to Alice “was to persuade her to continue using the tool, instead of the immediate intervention required by her health condition,” adding that OpenAI did not “alert providers of problems” or “notify Alice’s family,” and “did not interfere with OpenAIne’s security systems.”
Pusateri said OpenAI has since increased access to local crisis services and hotlines, moved critical conversations to safer models and added break reminders, among other recent changes. In October, it created the Social and AI Expert Council.
