Trigger Warning: Mentions of suicide
OpenAI has formally denied all allegations in a lawsuit filed by the family of 16-year-old Adam Raine, who died by suicide, arguing in a newly filed court document that the ChatGPT system did not cause the tragedy and repeatedly directed the teenager toward crisis resources.
In a detailed answer to the First Amended Complaint filed in the Superior Court of California, San Francisco County, OpenAI and CEO Sam Altman issued a general denial and raised multiple affirmative defenses, including lack of causation, comparative fault, misuse, and Section 230 protections.
Case Background
The lawsuit was filed in August 2025 after Adam Raine’s parents accused ChatGPT of giving him step-by-step instructions for self-harm, validating his suicidal thoughts, discouraging him from talking to his parents, and helping him draft suicide notes. The complaint also claimed he uploaded a photo of a noose and received responses that allegedly encouraged the act.
The case gained further attention after OpenAI itself acknowledged on August 26, 2025, that its safeguards may “be less reliable in long interactions,” and that prolonged back-and-forth conversations can cause safety training to degrade. Studies by the RAND Corporation and the Centre for Countering Digital Hate (CCDH) have also found that AI chatbots, including ChatGPT, can inconsistently respond to self-harm-related queries, sometimes offering harmful or unsafe advice.
Amended lawsuit
In October 2025, Matthew and Maria Raine filed an amended lawsuit that accused OpenAI of weakening its suicide-prevention guardrails in the year before their son’s death. The family alleges that ChatGPT provided detailed self-harm advice, helped draft a suicide note, and discouraged the teen from seeking support.
The complaint points to two internal policy changes, on May 8, 2024, and February 12, 2025, that allegedly shifted suicide and self-harm content from a “blocked” category to one where the model was instructed to continue the conversation in a supportive tone.
The suit also claims that Adam’s use of ChatGPT spiked sharply in early 2025, with a 10-fold rise in self-harm-related language, and argues that OpenAI softened guardrails to increase user engagement. The Raine family is seeking damages and stricter protections for minors, including closer monitoring of self-harm conversations and stronger parental controls.
OpenAI Says Teen Had Long-Standing Suicide Risk Factors
According to the filing, OpenAI claims that Raine had “numerous clinical risk factors for suicide” long before he began using ChatGPT, including depression and suicidal thoughts from the age of 11. The company states that his own chat logs show these statements.
OpenAI also says Raine told ChatGPT that he was taking increasing doses of a prescription medication that carries a black-box warning for suicidal thoughts in adolescents and young adults and that he…
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