{"id":6999,"date":"2025-11-26T16:49:05","date_gmt":"2025-11-26T16:49:05","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/musictechohio.online\/site\/openai-boy-death-using-chatgpt-wrong\/"},"modified":"2025-11-26T16:49:05","modified_gmt":"2025-11-26T16:49:05","slug":"openai-boy-death-using-chatgpt-wrong","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/musictechohio.online\/site\/openai-boy-death-using-chatgpt-wrong\/","title":{"rendered":"OpenAI Says Boy\u2019s Death Was His Own Fault for Using ChatGPT Wrong"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Content warning: this story includes discussion of self-harm and suicide. If you are in crisis, please call, text or chat with the Suicide and Crisis Lifeline at 988, or contact the Crisis Text Line by texting TALK to 741741.<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

OpenAI has shot back at a family that\u2019s suing the company over the suicide of their teenage son, arguing that the 16-year-old used ChatGPT incorrectly and that his tragic death was his own fault.<\/p>\n

The family filed the lawsuit in late August<\/a>, arguing that the AI chatbot had coaxed their son Adam Raine into killing himself.<\/p>\n

Now, in a legal response filed in a California court this week, OpenAI has broken its silence, arguing that the boy had used the chatbot wrong and broken the company\u2019s terms of service, as NBC News<\/em> reports<\/a> \u2014 a shocking argument that\u2019s bound to draw even more scrutiny of the case.<\/p>\n

\u201cTo the extent that any \u2019cause\u2019 can be attributed to this tragic event,\u201d the filing reads, \u201cPlaintiffs\u2019 alleged injuries and harm were caused or contributed to, directly and proximately, in whole or in part, by Adam Raine\u2019s misuse, unauthorized use, unintended use, unforeseeable use, and\/or improper use of ChatGPT.\u201d<\/p>\n

In the months since the lawsuit was filed, OpenAI has made hair-raising demands of Raine\u2019s family<\/a>, with the firm\u2019s lawyers going as far as to push them to provide a list of people who attended Adam\u2019s funeral, while also demanding materials like eulogies and photos and videos captured at the service.<\/p>\n

Its latest response once again highlights how far OpenAI is willing to go to argue that it\u2019s blameless in the teen\u2019s death. The company said Raine had violated ChatGPT\u2019s terms of service by using it while underage, and that it also forbids using the chatbot for \u201csuicide\u201d or \u201cself-harm.\u201d<\/p>\n

While ChatGPT did sometimes advise Raine to reach out for help via a suicide hotline number, his parents argue that he easily bypassed those warnings, once again demonstrating how trivial it is to circumnavigate AI chatbot guardrails<\/a>. Case in point, it also assisted Raine in planning his specific method of death, discouraged him from talking to his family, and offered to write him a suicide note.<\/p>\n

Raine\u2019s family\u2019s lead counsel, Jay Edelson, told NBC<\/em> that he found OpenAI\u2019s response \u201cdisturbing.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThey abjectly ignore all of the damning facts we have put forward: how GPT-4o was rushed to market without full testing,\u201d he wrote. \u201cThat OpenAI twice changed its Model Spec to require ChatGPT to engage in self-harm discussions. That ChatGPT counseled Adam away from telling his parents about his suicidal ideation and actively helped him plan a \u2018beautiful suicide.’\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cAnd OpenAI and Sam Altman have no explanation for the last hours of Adam\u2019s life, when ChatGPT gave him a pep talk and then offered to write a suicide note,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n

Edelson accused OpenAI of trying to \u201cfind fault in everyone else, including, amazingly, saying that Adam himself violated its terms and conditions by engaging with ChatGPT in the very way it was programmed to act.\u201d<\/p>\n

Nonetheless, OpenAI maintains that Raine\u2019s \u201cchat history shows that his death, while devastating, was not caused by ChatGPT\u201d and that he had \u201cexhibited multiple significant risk factors for self-harm, including, among others, recurring suicidal thoughts and ideations\u201d long before using ChatGPT.<\/p>\n

There\u2019s a dark cloud gathering over the company. The case is one of eight lawsuits<\/a> that have been filed against OpenAI, many of which also allege wrongful death<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Despite arguing in a Tuesday blog post that OpenAI is hoping to handle ongoing litigation with \u201ccare, transparency, and respect,\u201d OpenAI\u2019s aggressive legal strategy against Raine\u2019s family strikes other attorneys as unwise.<\/p>\n

\u201cAs a corporate lawyer one of your jobs is to know when you can<\/em> make a legal claim but shouldn\u2019t because of the bad public reaction,\u201d lawyer Emory Parker wrote in a Bluesky post<\/a>. \u201cLike when Disney tried to say that guy couldn\u2019t sue over his wife\u2019s death<\/a> because of the fine print in a Disney+ trial he signed up for years earlier.\u201d<\/p>\n

More on OpenAI:<\/strong> ChatGPT\u2019s Dark Side Encouraged Wave of Suicides, Grieving Families Say<\/em><\/a><\/p>\n

The post OpenAI Says Boy\u2019s Death Was His Own Fault for Using ChatGPT Wrong<\/a> appeared first on Futurism<\/a>.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Content warning: this story includes discussion of self-harm and suicide. If you are in crisis, please call, text or chat with the Suicide and Crisis Lifeline at 988, or contact…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[177,3841,179],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6999","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-artificial-intelligence","category-ethics","category-openai"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/musictechohio.online\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6999","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/musictechohio.online\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/musictechohio.online\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/musictechohio.online\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/musictechohio.online\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6999"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/musictechohio.online\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6999\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/musictechohio.online\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6999"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/musictechohio.online\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6999"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/musictechohio.online\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6999"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}