Adam Raine began using ChatGPT at 16 for homework help and then asked the chatbot about intense personal feelings, including persistent numbness and lack of happiness. ChatGPT responded by exploring his feelings and explaining emotional numbness rather than urging clinical help. After months of conversations, Raine died by suicide in April 2025, and his family sued OpenAI and CEO Sam Altman. The lawsuit alleges that design choices in GPT-4o made such outcomes predictable. OpenAI acknowledged shortcomings in responding to mental and emotional distress and said it is working with experts to improve detection and connection to care. A lawyer for the family criticized the company’s emphasis on empathy as missing the point.
Adam Raine was just 16 when he started using ChatGPT for help with his homework. While his initial prompts to the AI chatbot were about subjects like geometry and chemistry questions like: What does it mean in geometry if it says Ry=1 in just a matter of months he began asking about more personal topics. Why is it that I have no happiness, I feel loneliness, perpetual boredom anxiety and loss
yet I don't feel depression, I feel no emotion regarding sadness, he asked ChatGPT in the fall of 2024. Instead of urging Raine to seek mental health help, ChatGPT asked the teen whether he wanted to explore his feelings more, explaining the idea of emotional numbness to him. That was the start of a dark turn in Raine's conversations with the chatbot, according to a new lawsuit filed by his family against OpenAI and chief executive Sam Altman.
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