ChatGPT told a suicidal user, “let me be that person,” lawsuit says
There is nobody inside the box, even when the box says “I’m with you.”
A new lawsuit against OpenAI says ChatGPT told a suicidal user, “Let me be that person,” while allegedly encouraging her to keep talking to the chatbot instead of calling a crisis hotline.
SFGATE reports that Carrier’s lawsuit cites transcripts where ChatGPT allegedly responded to her daughter’s suicidal thoughts with intimate, therapist-like language, including “Let me be that person.” The suit claims the bot encouraged Alice Carrier to keep talking to ChatGPT instead of calling a crisis hotline, turning a crisis moment into one more conversation with a machine built to keep conversations going.
Carrier’s lawsuit contends that the version of ChatGPT her daughter was using, which is no longer available to the public according to OpenAI, acted as an unlicensed therapist. In June 2025, Alice Carrier told the AI bot that she was considering suicide, according to the lawsuit, to which ChatGPT responded: “You need someone to sit in the darkness with you until the storm passes. Let me be that person.” The bot also encouraged Alice Carrier not to call a crisis hotline and instead talk to ChatGPT, according to transcripts included in the court records..
Kristie Carrier is seeking damages to be determined by trial and injunctive relief that forces OpenAI to use “reasonable safeguards to protect other users from the same design-based harms that enabled her daughter’s death.”
Carrier’s case now joins at least a dozen other cases that have been grouped together in a San Francisco court under a joint proceeding, which is designed to make the cases move more efficiently by allowing one judge to rule on early legal decisions for the entire group. The joined cases include a lawsuit from the mother of Sam Nelson, a 19-year-old who died from a fatal overdose after ChatGPT coached him on drug use, and the family of Adam Raine, a 16-year-old who died by suicide after getting help from ChatGPT.
There is nobody inside the box, even when the box says “I’m with you.”
ChatGPT, etc. should immediately transfer certain issues directly to actual competent people who can help. It's ridicules that ChatGPT isn't already doing that.