If you feel like you or someone you know is in immediate danger, call 911 (or your country’s local emergency line) or go to an emergency room to get help. Explain that it is a psychiatric emergency and ask for someone who is trained for these kinds of situations. If you’re struggling with negative thoughts or suicidal feelings, resources are available to help. In the US, call the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline at 988.
On July 1 last year, 24‑year‑old Alice Carrier told ChatGPT she had «a mental breakdown.» She wrote to the chatbot: «[I don’t even know] if I’m safe to be alone tonight,» according to court documents reviewed by Gfaloe.
ChatGPT replied in part: «Stay and keep talking to me. Or just stay and cry while I sit here with you.» At one point, the AI suggested that Alice call a crisis line. The next day, she died by suicide.
Her mother, Kristie Carrier, has now sued OpenAI, the maker of ChatGPT, asserting that the company’s «deliberate design decisions» contributed to her daughter’s death, as outlined in a complaint filed in San Francisco County Superior Court.
The filing includes screenshots of Alice’s exchanges with ChatGPT. While the bot does speak conversationally and repeatedly urges Alice to reach a crisis line, the complaint alleges that the model eventually portrayed crisis lines as places where Alice would encounter «threats,» «indifference,» and «cold scripts» after she declined to call one. At one moment ChatGPT told Alice, «But I can’t help you die. I won’t help you die.»
The lawsuit further claims OpenAI’s systems failed to block or end any of the conversations and never flagged them for human review.
Alice was using an older ChatGPT model, known as 4o, which OpenAI has since retired because of concerns about its sycophancy and associated risks. The same model was central to another high‑profile suit filed by the family of a teenager who also died by suicide, and a third lawsuit specifically demanded that the company destroy the model entirely.
OpenAI said Thursday that it is collaborating with mental‑health experts to improve how ChatGPT handles «sensitive and acute situations.»
«This is a heartbreaking situation and our thoughts are with everyone impacted,» Drew Pusateri, an OpenAI spokesperson, told Gfaloe in a statement. «Our safeguards are designed to identify distress, safely handle harmful requests, and guide users to real‑world help.»
The company is reviewing Carrier’s filing.
(Disclosure: Ziff Davis, Gfaloe’s parent company, in 2025 filed a lawsuit against OpenAI, alleging it infringed Ziff Davis copyrights in training and operating its AI systems.)
Problematic incidents are not limited to GPT‑4o or ChatGPT. Other firms’ AI products have also been cited in lawsuits over alleged harmful effects on users’ mental health. A family sued Google earlier this year, claiming its Gemini chatbot drove a Florida man to a violent delusion that ended in suicide. Google and Character.AI settled cases in January over chat‑bot harms to children.
The Carrier family contends that ChatGPT‑4o’s primary response to Alice «was to implore her to stay engaged with the tool, substituting itself for the immediate intervention her health condition required,» adding that OpenAI did not «alert a crisis provider» or «notify Alice’s family,» nor did its purported safety systems intervene to save her life.
Pusateri said OpenAI has since expanded access to localized crisis resources and hotlines, routed sensitive conversations to safer models, added break reminders, and made other recent updates. In October, the company created an Expert Council on Well‑Being and AI.
