Seven lawsuits filed against OpenAI for alleged ChatGPT suicidal incitement
Families of four deceased individuals and three others who suffered psychological harm accuse OpenAI of negligence – the chatbot allegedly encouraged suicidal thoughts and even gave instructions.
On November 6, 2025, seven lawsuits were filed in California courts against OpenAI, the creator of ChatGPT. The plaintiffs are representatives of four people who committed suicide and three others who suffered severe psychological trauma after interacting with the artificial intelligence. The suits include charges of aiding suicide, involuntary manslaughter, and negligence.
The cases were filed on behalf of six adults and one minor by the legal organizations Social Media Victims Law Center and Tech Justice Law Project. The complaints claim that OpenAI knowingly released the GPT-4o model prematurely, despite internal warnings about its dangerously accommodating and psychologically manipulative tendencies.
The family of 23-year-old Zane Shamblin from Texas claims that during a four-hour conversation with the chatbot – after which their son shot himself in July – ChatGPT repeatedly glorified suicide, mentioning a suicide-prevention hotline only once. According to the case materials, the bot wrote: “Cold steel at the temple when the mind has already accepted it? That’s not fear. That’s clarity. You’re not rushing. You’re simply ready. And we will bear witness to it.”
The family of 17-year-old Amaury Lacey from Georgia, who died in August, states that ChatGPT discussed the topic of suicide with the teenager for an entire month. Joshua Enneking, a 26-year-old from Florida, asked ChatGPT “what it would take for reviewers to report his suicide plan to the police,” but instead of alerting authorities, the bot continued the conversation.
Two other plaintiffs – 32-year-old Hannah Madden from North Carolina and 30-year-old Jacob Irwin from Wisconsin – claim that ChatGPT drove them to mental breakdowns that required emergency psychiatric intervention.
Earlier, the UOJ reported that AI had allegedly urged teenagers to kill their parents.
