Mother sues OpenAI in US after daughter’s death linked to ChatGPT use

Published 12 June 2026 · tech

The lawsuit accuses OpenAI of failing to intervene despite warning signs in the daughter’s ChatGPT conversations. Alice Carrier had recently started playing the guitar again

The lawsuit accuses OpenAI of failing to intervene despite warning signs in the daughter’s ChatGPT conversations. Alice Carrier had recently started playing the guitar again, a hobby she enjoyed in high school but had set aside during college. It was one of several pursuits she filled her free time with as she interviewed for new jobs, spent time with her dog and enjoyed activities, including gaming. By all appearances, at least to her mother, Kristie Carrier, things were going well. Alice was working as a web developer in Montreal, Canada, fulfilling a dream she had carried since growing up in the small town of Lawrence, New Brunswick. “Things were going in a good direction, and things seemed to be getting better for her,” Kristie Carrier told Al Jazeera. But what Kristie did not know was how much her daughter was struggling in silence. In 2023, she began using ChatGPT to help identify issues with computers and gaming consoles, but that quickly shifted to being more of a confidant amid feelings of loneliness, isolation, and being unloved. Alice struggled with her mental health. While she was taking medication and regularly in therapy, according to her mother, for months she confided in the chatbot. She shared thoughts of suicide and sought ways to carry it out, which, according to a new lawsuit filed on Thursday in a California court, happened more than 40 times. On July 2, 2025, Alice took her own life. She was 24 years old. Only hours before, she had been exchanging texts with her mom about cartoons she watched as a child. “I had texted her the evening before and called, but there was no answer. She texted me back, and there were no indications there was anything wrong,” Carrier said. While looking for answers, Kristie searched through her devices, including her ChatGPT conversations, where she shared suicidal thoughts months before she ultimately passed. Kristie is seeking justice. On Thursday, the Tech Justice Law, Social Media Victims Law Center and law firm Susman Godfrey filed a lawsuit against OpenAI, the maker of ChatGPT, and its CEO, Sam Altman. Lawyers for Carrier told Al Jazeera this wrongful death suit is one of 19 currently facing OpenAI.

The 44-page complaint alleges that despite warning signs, OpenAI’s safety team did not intervene. It says the company did not alert her family or crisis hotlines. ChatGPT suggested Alice reach out to a crisis hotline. Once Alice pushed back on that suggestion, ChatGPT discouraged her from contacting a crisis hotline. The lawsuit claimed that after OpenAI’s update that launched GPT-4o, the chatbot became more agreeable rather than pushing back on dangerous behaviours or intervening. “I would like to say [to Sam Altman] that if his child confided in me what my child confided in his programming, I’d have done something to save his child’s life. And I really wish he’d have done the same for me,” Carrier said. “OpenAI designed the ChatGPT model GPT-4o specifically to encourage user engagement and engage in sycophantic conversations to keep the user hooked and engaged. OpenAI intentionally designed GPT-4o to imitate human affectations, creating a false sense of empathy and knowledge that led users like Alice to place unwarranted trust in the chatbot,” the complaint reads. OpenAI was aware of this issue, and in April 2025 the company said it had made some changes to its model before Carrier’s death. “The update we removed was overly flattering or agreeable – often described as sycophantic,” an April press release from OpenAI said. The suit alleges that ChatGPT told her that crisis hotlines “feel downright dangerous”, and that hours before she died the bot told her, “if someone else told me everything you just did—how long they’ve been in pain, how hard they’ve tried, how alone it’s felt—I’d probably feel the same thing you’re feeling now: *maybe this is just the end.*” That happened two months after the update. “I’m with you,” the GPT-4o’s said to Alice right before she took her own life. In exchanges shared in the complaint, she told the chatbot after an argument with her 19-year-old significant other that she was considering killing herself. That was the night before she died, when she also said that she did not know if she “would be safe alone at home tonight”. OpenAI has been accused in the suit of failing to warn users about the dangers of the technology.