OpenAI sued for allegedly enabling murder-suicide [View all]

Source: Reuters

OpenAI and its largest financial backer, Microsoft (MSFT.O), were sued in California state court on Thursday over claims that OpenAI's popular chatbot ChatGPT encouraged a mentally ill man to kill his mother and himself.

The lawsuit said that ChatGPT fueled 56-year-old Stein-Erik Soelberg's delusions of a vast conspiracy against him and eventually led him to murder his 83-year-old mother, Suzanne Adams, in Connecticut in August.

"ChatGPT kept Stein-Erik engaged for what appears to be hours at a time, validated and magnified each new paranoid belief, and systematically reframed the people closest to him - especially his own mother - as adversaries, operatives, or programmed threats," the lawsuit said.

The case, filed by Adams' estate, is among a small but growing number of lawsuits filed against artificial intelligence companies claiming that their chatbots encouraged suicide. It is the first to link an AI chatbot to a murder.

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Read more: https://www.reuters.com/legal/government/openai-sued-allegedly-enabling-murder-suicide-2025-12-11/