Facing five lawsuits alleging wrongful deaths, OpenAI lobbed its first defense Tuesday, denying in a court filing that ChatGPT caused a teen’s suicide and instead arguing the teen violated terms that prohibit discussing suicide or self-harm with the chatbot.
“They abjectly ignore all of the damning facts we have put forward: how GPT-4o was rushed to market without full testing. That 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 ‘beautiful suicide,’” Edelson (family's lawyer) said. “And OpenAI and Sam Altman have no explanation for the last hours of Adam’s life, when ChatGPT gave him a pep talk and then offered to write a suicide note.”
I suppose this was inevitable. Their "terms of service" will probably protect them from other things too, like if it tells people to drink bleach or something, they'll say it violates TOS to follow hallucinatory directions from it.