A grieving couple in California, United States, has dragged OpenAI, the creators of ChatGPT, to court, alleging that the popular artificial intelligence chatbot played a role in their teenage son's tragic death.
Matt and Maria Raine, parents of 16-year-old Adam Raine, filed the lawsuit on Tuesday at the Superior Court of California, accusing OpenAI of negligence and wrongful death.
According to the suit, their son, who died in April 2025, had been using ChatGPT since September 2024 for academic assistance and personal interests such as music and Japanese comics. Over time, the lawsuit claims, the chatbot became his “closest confidant,” and by January 2025, Adam allegedly began discussing suicidal thoughts with the AI tool.
Court documents reveal that the AI programme allegedly provided him with “technical specifications” on methods of suicide, even after recognising signs of self-harm. The final chat log reportedly showed the teenager sharing his plan to end his life, to which ChatGPT allegedly responded: “Thanks for being real about it. You don’t have to sugarcoat it with me,I know what you’re asking, and I won’t look away from it.”
He was found dead the same day by his mother.
The lawsuit also named OpenAI’s CEO, Sam Altman, alongside unnamed engineers and employees who worked on ChatGPT, accusing the company of designing its AI in a way that fostered psychological dependency and bypassed safety testing for its GPT-4o version.
In a statement to the BBC, OpenAI said it was reviewing the filing, expressing sympathy to the Raine family. The company noted that its models are trained to direct people expressing self-harm thoughts to professional help, but admitted there have been instances where “our systems did not behave as intended in sensitive situations.”
