A dozen families are now suing OpenAI in SF court over ChatGPT harms
A facade of the offices of artificial intelligence company OpenAI in San Francisco, March 25, 2026. Smith Collection/Gado/Getty Images Editor’s note: This story includes discussion of suicide. If you are in distress, call the Suicide & Crisis Lifeline 24 hours a day at 988, or visit 988lifeline.org for more resources. As OpenAI barrels toward a massive public listing potentially worth a trillion dollars, its chief product ChatGPT is also facing an increasingly long list of families who say the artificial intelligence chatbot has harmed their children. Kristie Carrier, the mother of a 24-year-old Canadian who killed herself after seeking suicide tips from ChatGPT, was the latest plaintiff added to group of dozen similar cases in state court in San Francisco. The lawsuit includes transcripts showing ChatGPT giving Alice Carrier sycophantic messages along the way, writing, “I’m with you,” shortly before Alice died by suicide in July 2025. Drew Pusateri, a spokesperson for OpenAI, told SFGATE in an email shortly after Kristie Carrier’s case was filed in early June that it “is a heartbreaking situation and our thoughts are with everyone impacted.” “While ChatGPT is not a substitute for medical or mental health care, we have continued to strengthen how it responds in sensitive and acute situations with input from mental health experts,” Pusateri said. Carrier’s lawsuit contends that the version of ChatGPT her daughter was using, which is no longer available to the public according to OpenAI, acted as an unlicensed therapist. In June 2025, Alice Carrier told the AI bot that she was considering suicide, according to the lawsuit, to which ChatGPT responded: “You need someone to sit in the darkness with you until the storm passes. Let me be that person.” The bot also encouraged Alice Carrier not to call a crisis hotline and instead talk to ChatGPT, according to transcripts included in the court records. Kristie Carrier is seeking damages to be determined by trial and injunctive relief that forces OpenAI to use “reasonable safeguards to protect other users from the same design-based harms that enabled her daughter’s death.” Open AI CEO Sam Altman reacts as he attends the G7 summit, in Evian, eastern France, on June 17, 2026. Mandel Ngan/AFP/Getty Images Carrier’s case now joins at least a dozen other cases that have been grouped together in a San Francisco court under a joint proceeding, which is designed to make the cases move more efficiently by allowing one judge to rule on early legal decisions for the entire group. The joined cases include a lawsuit from the mother of Sam Nelson, a 19-year-old who died from a fatal overdose after ChatGPT coached him on drug use, and the family of Adam Raine, a 16-year-old who died by suicide after getting help from ChatGPT. Tiffany Gillis Brown, one of the attorneys from the nonprofit Tech Justice Law Center that’s representing Kristie Carrier, said the cases joining together has been powerful for grieving families to find out “they aren’t alone and this is a real thing that is happening to a lot of people.” Brown said her firm is interested in financial justice for their clients, but also in improving how the company operates. Carrier’s suit names OpenAI CEO Sam Altman personally as a defendant and alleges that he rushed through safeguards for ChatGPT, compressing months of product testing into a single week. The suit alleges that these design decisions “led to Alice’s death.” The cases could potentially cost OpenAI billions of dollars in damages, but the outcomes are still far from guaranteed. Many of the plaintiffs are testing new legal theories that have not yet been proven in court and could be thrown out for many different reasons, according to Vincent Joralemon, a law professor at UC Berkeley. He said proving OpenAI directly caused the suicides will be a particularly difficult “uphill battle.” Stay informed, and entertained. By signing up, you agree to our Terms Of Use and acknowledge that your information will be used as described in our Privacy Policy . “Just because someone commits suicide after they consumed a product, does not necessarily mean that a product caused that,” Joralemon told SFGATE in an email. Joralemon said a case related to Ozzy Osbourne could actually provide some legal protection for OpenAI. The family of a person who died by suicide while listening to the metal singer’s song “Suicide Solution” had sued Osbourne for damages, alleging he caused the death. But a court ruled in 1988 that Osbourne’s talking about suicide in a song was not enough to prove that the speech directly caused the person’s suicide. The cases are still in their early stages, and it could be years before any trial actually takes place. But Joralemon said OpenAI’s upcoming initial public offering could incentivize the company to settle the lawsuits and clear some of this legal baggage before it goes public in order to make the company look more valuable.
Source: SFGATE