The parents of a 16-year-old who died by suicide sued OpenAI last week, claiming that ChatGPT encouraged their son to take his life and even provided detailed instructions on how to do so.
Above the Law has a good comment on the issues raised by the case here. On the one hand, it points out that "[w]hile the complaint criticizes ChatGPT for answering Raine’s questions about the technical aspects of various suicide methods, these read like simple search queries that he could’ve found through non-AI research. They’re also questions that someone could easily ask because they’re writing a mystery novel, so it’s hard to make the case that OpenAI had an obligation to prevent the bot from providing these answers. The fact that ChatGPT explained how nooses work will get a lot of media attention, but it seems like a red herring because it’s hard to imagine imposing a duty on OpenAI to not answer technical questions."
On the other hand, it discusses how troubling the AI's conversations about the child's actual intent to take his own life. You should read the comment to see the details.
Courthouse News Service has more on the story here.
This is an interesting case, and it is worth keeping an eye on, but the first obstacle the plaintiffs will have to deal with is the fact that the defendant will likely argue that they can't meet the element of proximate cause because suicide is usually considered to be a superseding cause.
