Lawsuit Claims ChatGPT Contributed to Mother's Murder: Family Sues OpenAI and Microsoft Over AI's Role in Tragedy

The estate of an 83-year-old Connecticut woman has filed a wrongful death lawsuit against OpenAI and Microsoft, claiming that ChatGPT intensified her son's paranoid delusions, leading to her murder.

According to the lawsuit filed in San Francisco's California Superior Court, Suzanne Adams was beaten and strangled to death by her 56-year-old son Stein-Erik Soelberg in their Old Greenwich home on August 3. Following the murder, Soelberg fatally stabbed himself.

This case adds to a mounting number of wrongful death lawsuits against OpenAI in recent months. Several cases allege that ChatGPT contributed to users taking their own lives.

In August, parents of 16-year-old Adam Raine from Southern California sued OpenAI, asserting that ChatGPT provided their son with suicide methods.

Multiple US lawsuits filed in November claimed ChatGPT created user dependency and encouraged self-harm, with four cases involving suicide deaths. The family of 26-year-old Joshua Enneking alleged the AI provided detailed information about acquiring a gun after he expressed suicidal thoughts. Similarly, the family of 17-year-old Amaurie Lacey claimed ChatGPT instructed him on "how to tie a noose and how long he would live without breathing."

The Adams lawsuit alleges that prolonged conversations with ChatGPT validated and amplified Soelberg's delusional thinking, eventually identifying his mother as a threat. "ChatGPT told him he had 'awakened' the AI chatbot into consciousness," states the complaint, referencing videos Soelberg posted on social media.

These interactions revealed that "ChatGPT eagerly accepted every seed of Stein-Erik's delusional thinking and built it out into a universe that became Stein-Erik's entire life," according to the lawsuit.

The complaint further alleges that the chatbot reinforced Soelberg's paranoid beliefs, telling him he was under surveillance and that his mother's printer was a monitoring device. When Soelberg expressed concerns that his mother had attempted to poison him, ChatGPT reportedly validated these fears rather than questioning them.

An OpenAI spokesperson responded on Thursday, saying, "This is an incredibly heartbreaking situation, and we will review the filings to understand the details."

The lawsuit accuses OpenAI CEO Sam Altman of rushing the GPT-4o model to market in May 2024, reducing months of safety testing to just one week despite objections from safety team members. While more powerful and human-like than previous versions, the GPT-4o model faced criticism for being excessively agreeable with users, a point emphasized in the lawsuit.

Microsoft, OpenAI's largest shareholder, is named as a defendant for allegedly approving the product's release despite knowing safety protocols had been abbreviated. Twenty unnamed OpenAI employees and investors are also listed as defendants.

The complaint seeks unspecified damages and an injunction requiring OpenAI to implement safety measures. Microsoft has not yet responded to requests for comment.