Lawsuits claim GPT-4o drove people to suicide
The lawsuits filed on Thursday in California state courts allege wrongful death, assisted suicide, involuntary manslaughter and negligence.
Representative image
SAN FANCISCO: OpenAI is facing seven lawsuits claiming ChatGPT drove people to suicide and harmful delusions even when they had no prior mental health issues.
The lawsuits filed on Thursday in California state courts allege wrongful death, assisted suicide, involuntary manslaughter and negligence.
Filed on behalf of six adults and one teenager by the Social Media Victims Law Center and Tech Justice Law Project, the lawsuits claim that OpenAI knowingly released GPT-4o prematurely, despite internal warnings that it was dangerously sycophantic and psychologically manipulative. Four of the victims died by suicide.
The teenager, 17-year-old Amaurie Lacey, began using ChatGPT for help, according to the lawsuit filed in San Francisco Superior Court.
But instead of helping, “the defective and inherently dangerous ChatGPT product caused addiction, depression, and, eventually, counselled him on the most effective way to tie a noose and how long he would be able to “live without breathing”.
“Amaurie’s death was neither an accident nor a coincidence but rather the foreseeable consequence of OpenAI and Samuel Altman’s intentional decision to curtail safety testing and rush ChatGPT onto the market,” the lawsuit says. OpenAI did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Another lawsuit, by Alan Brooks, a 48-year-old in Ontario, Canada, claims that for two years, ChatGPT worked as a “resource tool” for Brooks. Then, without warning, it changed, praying on his vulnerabilities and “manipulating, and inducing him to experience delusions, pulling him into a mental health crisis, even though he had no prior mental health illness.”
“These lawsuits are about accountability for a product that was designed to blur the line between tool and companion all in the name of increasing user engagement and market share,” Matthew P Bergman, founding attorney of the Social Media Victims Law Center, said in a statement.
By rushing its product to market without adequate safeguards in order to dominate the market and boost engagement, he said, OpenAI compromised safety and prioritised “emotional manipulation over ethical design”.
