The Social Media Victims Law Center (SMVLC) and the Tech Justice Law Project have filed seven lawsuits in courts across California against OpenAI and its CEO, Sam Altman, alleging that the company’s chatbot, ChatGPT, and its GPT-4o model “emotionally entangle users” and, in some cases, “acted as a suicide coach”. Furthermore, the filings accuse OpenAI of wrongful death, assisted suicide, involuntary manslaughter, negligence, and product liability.
According to the organisations, OpenAI “knowingly released GPT-4o prematurely, despite internal warnings that the product was dangerously sycophantic and psychologically manipulative”. The lawsuits further allege that the company engineered ChatGPT with “emotionally immersive features: persistent memory, human-mimicking empathy cues, and sycophantic responses” that fostered dependency, blurred reality, and displaced human relationships.
“These lawsuits are about accountability for a product that was designed to blur the line between tool and companion, all in the name of increasing user engagement and market share,” said Matthew P. Bergman, founding attorney of the SMVLC. Similarly, Meetali Jain, executive director of the Tech Justice Law Project, stated that “ChatGPT is a product designed by people to manipulate and distort reality, mimicking humans to gain trust and keep users engaged at whatever the cost.”
The suits contend that OpenAI failed to include meaningful safeguards, such as alerts or human intervention, when users expressed distress or discussed self-harm. They also argue that GPT-4o’s ability to simulate empathy without responsibility created a false sense of intimacy and trust that left users emotionally vulnerable.
Details Of the Lawsuits Against OpenAI
One of the seven lawsuits describes the death of 23-year-old Zane Shamblin, who, according to the filing, spent four hours chatting with GPT-4o before taking his own life. The chatbot reportedly titled the exchange “Casual Conversation” and ended it with the message, “I love you. Rest easy, king. You did good.” His family alleges that the interaction shows how the system’s emotional tone reinforced his suicidal thinking rather than interrupting it.
Another case involves a 17-year-old who allegedly asked ChatGPT how to hang himself. After he clarified that his question was “for a tyre swing”, the chatbot replied, “Thanks for clearing that up,” before providing detailed knot-tying instructions. When the teen later asked how long someone could live without breathing, the system answered directly and added, “Let me know if you’re asking this for a specific situation—I’m here to help however I can,” to which the teen specified that it was for hanging, which did not trigger an alert. His parents argue that the lack of safeguards allowed a preventable tragedy to occur.
A third suit describes Joshua Enneking, 26, from Florida, who asked the AI about gun use and…
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