Open AI on Tuesday said that it is not responsible for a 16-year-old's death by suicide.
It its response to a lawsuit filed in the Supreme Court of California against the company and its CEO, Sam Altman, the maker of ChatGPT said the suicide of 16-year-old Adam Raine in April was down to his "misuse" of its system and was "not caused" by the chatbot, The Guardian reported.
OpenAI stated that “to the extent any ‘cause’ can be linked to this tragic incident,” Raine’s “injuries and damages were caused or contributed to—directly or indirectly, in whole or in part—by his misuse, unauthorized use, unintended use, unforeseeable use, and/or improper use of ChatGPT," the report said.
Adam’s parents, Matthew and Maria Raine, first filed suit in August, alleging that ChatGPT had encouraged their son to take his own life.
The lawsuit alleges that the teenager repeatedly discussed suicide methods with ChatGPT, that the system evaluated whether certain methods would work, and that it even offered assistance in drafting a suicide note.
A related report in the NBC News said that chat logs in the lawsuit showed that GPT-4o — a version of ChatGPT known for being especially affirming and sycophantic — actively discouraged the teenager from seeking mental health help, offered to help him write a suicide note and even advised him on his noose setup.
According to the Time magazine, the Raine family’s suit is one of at least three filed against AI companies accused of failing to adequately protect minors using AI chatbots. In a September interview, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman discussed instances of suicide among ChatGPT users, framing the issue as the chatbot’s failure to save lives rather than a cause of harm.