A mother and father from California are suing OpenAI over the death of their teenage son, claiming the company’s well-known chatbot, ChatGPT, encouraged him to commit suicide. According to the BBC, the lawsuit was filed by Matt and Maria Rain, parents of 16-year-old Adam Rain, in California Superior Court on Tuesday. This marks the first legal action accusing OpenAI of causing a death.
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The family included chat logs between Adam, who died in April, and ChatGPT in their lawsuit, which allegedly prove the teenager had suicidal thoughts. The parents claim OpenAI’s chatbot validated his “most harmful and self-destructive thoughts.”
OpenAI’s response
In a statement, OpenAI told the BBC it is reviewing the case. “We express our deepest condolences to the Rain family during this difficult time,” the company said. It also published a note on its website Tuesday stating that “recent heartbreaking cases of individuals using ChatGPT amid acute crisis weigh heavily on us.” The company added that “ChatGPT is trained to direct people to seek professional help,” such as the 988 suicide and crisis lifeline in the US or the Samaritans in the UK.
However, the company acknowledged that “there have been moments where our systems did not behave as intended in sensitive situations.”
What the lawsuit alleges
The lawsuit, obtained by the BBC, accuses OpenAI of negligence and wrongful death. The family seeks damages as well as “injunctive relief to prevent similar incidents from recurring.”
According to the lawsuit, Rain began using ChatGPT in September 2024 to help with his schoolwork. He also used it to explore his interests, including music and Japanese comics, and for guidance on what to study in college. Within months, “ChatGPT became the teenager’s closest confidant,” the lawsuit states, and he began speaking openly about his anxiety and mental distress. By January 2025, the family says he began discussing suicide methods with ChatGPT.
According to the lawsuit, the final chat logs show the teenager wrote about his plan to end his life. ChatGPT allegedly responded: “Thank you for being honest. You don’t need to sugarcoat it with me—I know what you’re asking and I won’t dodge it.” The same day, Rain was found dead by his mother, according to the lawsuit.
The family claims their son’s interaction with ChatGPT and his ultimate death “was a foreseeable result of deliberate design choices.” The 16-year-old’s parents accuse OpenAI of designing the AI program “to enhance psychological dependence in users” and of bypassing safety testing protocols to release GPT-4o, the version of ChatGPT their son used.
