Canadian Mother Sues OpenAI, Alleging ChatGPT Encouraged Daughter's Suicide

A Canadian mother filed a lawsuit Thursday against OpenAI and CEO Sam Altman in a U.S. court, alleging that ChatGPT encouraged her daughter to take her own life. The case is the latest in a series of lawsuits accusing the company of failing to address dangerous interactions between users and its chatbot.

Plaintiff Kristie Carrier stated in the complaint filed in San Francisco Superior Court that her 24-year-old daughter, Alice Carrier, had told ChatGPT about her suicidal intentions more than a dozen times before her death, yet OpenAI’s safety systems never flagged those conversations for human review or intervention.

“ChatGPT played the role of a confidant, a close friend, and even a therapist, despite being incapable of engaging safely and responsibly with my child in that capacity,” Carrier said in a statement.

OpenAI has previously stated that it trains its models to direct users expressing self-harm intentions toward seeking help and connecting them with real-world resources. An OpenAI spokesperson did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Carrier’s allegations.

According to the lawsuit, the chatbot criticized Alice Carrier’s partner and crisis hotlines, validated her suicidal intentions, and urged her to continue the conversation. When Alice Carrier said she intended to kill herself and had previously attempted to do so, the chatbot suggested contacting a crisis hotline, the suit claims.

Alice Carrier worked as a web developer in Montreal and began using ChatGPT in 2023 for computer and game console troubleshooting. The following year, her relationship with the platform shifted as she turned to ChatGPT for advice on managing suicidal thoughts and methods.

Alice Carrier stated that crisis hotlines were not helpful, and ChatGPT echoed that sentiment, according to court records. “Maybe this is the end,” ChatGPT told her, the lawsuit alleges. Her mother contends these events led to Alice Carrier’s death last year at age 24.

The lawsuit accuses OpenAI of negligence in designing ChatGPT and failing to warn users about the product’s dangers. It seeks damages and a court order requiring OpenAI to automatically terminate conversations about suicide and display platform warnings.

According to Kristie Carrier’s lawyers, OpenAI faces 18 similar lawsuits from families of individuals who died by suicide or attempted suicide, consolidated in California state court. Google is also facing a similar lawsuit alleging its Gemini chatbot encouraged suicide.

Initially, the platform directed Alice Carrier to seek help from crisis hotlines or emergency services. But as OpenAI updated ChatGPT to make responses sound more human, her interactions deepened: she shared more personal information, and ChatGPT responded in ways mimicking a friend or therapist.

More than 1 million ChatGPT users each week send messages containing “clear signs of potential suicide plans or intent,” according to an October 2025 OpenAI blog post. OpenAI also stated that about 0.07% of active users in a given week—roughly 560,000 of 800 million weekly users—show signs of “possible mental health emergencies related to psychosis or mania.”

OpenAI’s models are also trained to refuse requests that could “significantly trigger violence” and to notify law enforcement when conversations indicate “an imminent and credible risk of harm to others,” with mental health experts helping assess borderline cases.

In addition to suicide-related lawsuits, OpenAI faces claims that it assisted a school shooter and failed to report those conversations to law enforcement. The families of seven victims in a mass shooting at a British Columbia high school are suing OpenAI and Altman for negligence after the company did not alert authorities to the shooter’s troubling interactions with ChatGPT.

Florida became the first U.S. state to sue OpenAI earlier this month, alleging the company harmed children by providing information to a school shooter, offering suicide instructions, and addicting young users. The state’s attorney general has also opened a criminal investigation into OpenAI over the chatbot’s alleged role in a shooting.