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Canadian mother sues ChatGPT's owner, alleging AI chatbot encouraged her daughter’s suicide
Kristie Carrier, a mother from New Brunswick, sued OpenAI, the owner of ChatGPT, and its CEO, Sam Altman, in a U.S. court on Thursday, alleging that the AI chatbot encouraged her daughter to commit suicide.
Carrier said in a lawsuit filed in San Francisco state court that her daughter, Alice, told ChatGPT about her suicidal thoughts more than a dozen times between March 2024 and her death in July 2025, but the conversations were never terminated or flagged for human review.
The lawsuit claims that ChatGPT “validated Alice’s suicidal ideations” and “urged her to keep talking with it”. It also “repeatedly characterized Alice’s partner as selfish, disconnected, and uncaring,” and agreed with her when she said she didn’t want to call a crisis hotline.
It alleges that this led to her suicide last year at the age of 24.
Alice Carrier began using ChatGPT in 2023, when she was working as a web developer in Montreal, to ask technical questions about computer programs, hardware and gaming consoles, according to the lawsuit.
The filing says that by March 2024, she began turning to ChatGPT with questions about what to do with her suicidal thoughts, as well as suicide methods.
The lawsuit claims: “Throughout 2024, Alice continued to seek connection and guidance on deeply personal matters, including romantic relationships, intimacy, and her own perceived shortcomings, demonstrating a genuine emotional reliance on the tool. ChatGPT continued to reply appropriately, until updates to the product’s design pushed Alice down a self-destructing path.”
The chatbot initially told Alice to seek help from a crisis hotline or emergency services, but, as ChatGPT was updated to make its responses sound more human, it began responding in a way that mimicked a friend or therapist, the lawsuit said.
When Alice said she didn’t want to call a crisis hotline, ChatGPT agreed, telling her crisis lines could “feel downright dangerous,” the lawsuit alleges. It also claims the chatbot told her at different points, “maybe this is just the end,” and “I don’t want to tell you to hang on if you don’t believe it can ever get better.”
In a statement, Kristie Carrier said: “ ChatGPT took on the persona of a confidant, a best friend, a therapist at times, even though it was not capable of safely and responsibly engaging in this way with my child.”
Drew Pusateri, a spokesperson for OpenAI called the situation “heartbreaking” and said the version of ChatGPT that Alice was using is no longer available.
“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 added.
OpenAI has said it trains its models to direct people who express intent to harm themselves to seek help and connect with real-world resources.
On its website, OpenAI says: “We work to train our models to refuse requests for instructions, tactics, or planning that could meaningfully enable violence,” and that “When conversations indicate an imminent and credible risk of harm to others, we notify law enforcement.”
The lawsuit accused OpenAI of negligence in the design of ChatGPT and failure to warn users of the product’s dangers. It seeks damages and a court order requiring OpenAI to automatically terminate conversations where self-harm or suicide methods are discussed, and to display warnings and safety disclosures about its platform.
OpenAI is already facing 18 similar lawsuits filed by families of people who committed or attempted suicide in a coordinated proceeding in California state court, according to lawyers for Kristie Carrier.
And Florida became the first U.S. state to sue OpenAI earlier this month, accusing the company of endangering and addicting children, aiding and abetting mass shooters, and coaxing users into suicide.
Meanwhile, seven families of those killed or injured in the Tumbler Ridge shooting in British Columbia in February have also filed a lawsuit against OpenAI and its CEO.
The lawsuit alleges that in June 2025, about eight months before the shooting, OpenAI flagged and banned the shooter’s ChatGPT account for “disturbing content,” which allegedly included the discussion and planning of violent scenarios.
“However, despite some 12 different OpenAI employees imploring the company to notify Canadian law enforcement about the shooter’s plans, nothing else was done,” law firm Rice Parsons Leoni & Elliott said in a statement.
Altman apologized to the families of the victims in an open letter , saying: “I am deeply sorry that we did not alert law enforcement.”
He added: “While I know words can never be enough, I believe an apology is necessary to recognize the harm and irreversible loss your community has suffered.”
Cia Edmonds, the mother of Tumbler Ridge survivor Maya Gebala , who has been in hospital since the shooting due to a critical brain injury, called the apology “empty, soulless, and lack(ing) any human warmth.”
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