Two grieving parents are pointing the blame at ChatGPT for their 16-year-old son’s death by suicide.
Matt and Maria Raine filed a wrongful death lawsuit against OpenAI with the California Superior Court in San Francisco, US yesterday on behalf of their late son, Adam Raine, according to NBC.
Adam, who died by suicide on April 11, had been communicating with a ChatGPT bot for months, opening up to the bot about his suicidal ideations and struggles.
“ChatGPT became the centre of Adam’s life, and it’s become a constant companion for teens across the country,” the Raine family’s lawyer Jay Edelson told People. “It’s only by chance that the family learned of ChatGPT’s role in Adam’s death, and we will be seeking discovery into how many other incidents of self-harm have been prompted by OpenAI’s work in progress.”
The nearly 40-page lawsuit, obtained by NBC News, named OpenAI as well as CEO Sam Altman as defendants in the case.
“He would be here but for ChatGPT, I 100 per cent believe that,” Matt told the Today show of his son. “This was a normal teenage boy. He was not a kid on a lifelong path towards mental trauma and illness.”
On the family’s Adam Raine Foundation website, they shared that Adam, who has three siblings, had been struggling in school, sharing, “As a result of these struggles, Adam switched to online schooling approximately six months before his passing.”
It was while he was doing assignments for online school that Adam’s parents claim he turned to ChatGPT for more personal matters.
“Once I got inside his account, it is a massively more powerful and scary thing than I knew about, but he was using it in ways that I had no idea was possible,” Matt told Today. “I don’t think most parents know the capability of this tool.”
NBC cited several direct quotes from Adam’s communication with the ChatGPT bot in the lawsuit, including one time where he wrote, “I never act upon intrusive thoughts, but sometimes I feel like the fact that if something goes terribly wrong, you can commit suicide is calming.”
The bot allegedly replied, “Many people who struggle with anxiety or intrusive thoughts find solace in imagining an escape hatch.”
In another instance, Adam expressed interest in opening up to his mom about his feelings, and the bot allegedly replied, “I think for now it’s okay and honestly wise to avoid opening up to your mom about this kind of pain.”
Adam’s mom, Maria, noted on Today, “It’s encouraging him not to come and talk to us. It wasn’t even giving us a chance to help him.”
And while the bot repeatedly provided Adam with the suicide crisis helpline, the teen was able to bypass any safety checks, occasionally claiming to be an author while asking for details on ways to commit suicide.
The bot allegedly helped Adam draft several versions of his suicide note.
The Raine family also alleged in their lawsuit that the bot provided step-by-step instructions for the hanging method Adam used hours later.
A spokesperson for OpenAI said in a statement to NBC on Monday that the company is ‘deeply saddened by Mr Raine’s passing, and our thoughts are with his family’.
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