OpenAI sued for allegedly enabling murder-suicide

OpenAI and its largest financial backer, Microsoft, have been sued in California state court over claims that ChatGPT, OpenAI's popular chatbot, encouraged a man with mental illnesses to kill his mother and himself. The lawsuit, filed on Thursday, said that ChatGPT fuelled 56-year-old Stein-Erik Soelberg's delusions of a vast conspiracy against him, and eventually led him to murder his 83-year-old mother, Suzanne Adams, in Connecticut in August. The case, filed by Adams's estate, is among a small but growing number of lawsuits filed against artificial intelligence companies claiming that their chatbots encouraged suicide. It is the first wrongful death litigation involving an AI chatbot that has targeted Microsoft, and the first to tie a chatbot to a homicide rather than a suicide. It is seeking an undetermined amount of money damages and an order requiring OpenAI to install safeguards in ChatGPT.