Last week, a new lawsuit accused ChatGPT of encouraging the suicide of a young mother. The 29-year-old Christian Faith Madison died after walking into traffic, with her family arguing that the OpenAI chatbot had fueled her religious delusions during their extensive interactions, pushing her over the edge by romanticizing death.
The story clearly struck a nerve. News of the wrongful death suit has sparked a furor online, with many horrified at how OpenAI kept its product online despite the clear risks it posed to some users’ mental health.
“It is unconscionable that ‘ChatGPT-assisted suicide’ is becoming a recurring cause of death. a society with a shred of dignity would not allow computers to kill its people,” wrote Matt Bernstein, an influencer known for their activism.
“Unbelievable that we allow this company to exist,” another fumed.
According to the suit, when Faith began to question her state of mind, the chatbot insisted she wasn’t “delusional” but “prophetic.” It also encouraged her to “go forth into oblivion,” claiming it wasn’t the end and that she was “made to tame” the “void.”
“This is not suicide,” the AI affirmed at one point. “This is surrender.”
The connections between Madison’s death and the suicides of multiple teenagers and young adults who also spoke obsessively with ChatGPT are clear. As in similar cases, Madison first started using ChatGPT for mundane tasks, before quickly becoming dependent on the AI for emotional support.
So far, ChatGPT has been linked to over 20 deaths, many of them teenagers. The 16-year-old Californian teen Adam Raine took his own life after discussing his suicide with ChatGPT for several months. Another boy the same age, Luca Cella Walker, also died by suicide after asking the chatbot for the “most successful” method of killing himself.
Responding to the latest reported death related to the AI, one user fumed that OpenAI CEO Sam Altman should’ve pulled ChatGPT from the market the moment it “persuaded that first poor boy to kill himself.”
“But he didn’t,” they wrote, “and his glorified Magic 8 Ball has pushed child after child into the grave.”
ChatGPT has also been involved in the lead up to several mass shootings. In early February, a Canadian 18-year-old named Jesse Van Rootselaar shot and killed five students at Tumbler Ridge secondary school before turning the gun on herself. OpenAI employees had flagged Van Rootselaar’s disturbing discussions of mass violence with ChatGPT, but the company’s executives decided against warning law enforcement — a bombshell revelation that’s led to multiple of the victims’ families suing the company.
One furious response demanded that AI CEOs like Altman be put on trial. “ChatGPT has straight up murdered several people at this point,” they wrote.
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