This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.
He was sending it 650 messages a day. This kid was lonely. He needed a person to talk to.
The kid was trying to find a solution to reach out to someone, he said that he wanted to leave the rope out in the open so that his parents can find out. ChatGPT told him to not do it and that it's better if they find him after the fact
I can't wait for the AI bubble to burst. It's fuckign cancer
Me too. Nearly every job posting I see now wants some experience with AI. I make the argument AI is not always correct and will output what you want it to have a bias. Since biases are not always correct, the data/information is useless.
Yeah, I have some background in History and ChatGTP will be objectively wrong with some things. Then I will tell it is wrong because X, Y and Z, and then the stupid thing will come back with, "Yes, you are right, X, Y, Z were a thing because...".
If I didn't know that it was wrong, or if say, a student took what it said at face value, then they too would now be wrong. Literal misinformation.
Not to mention the other times it is wrong, and not just chatGTP because it will source things like Reddit. Recently Brave AI made the claim that Ironfox the Firefox fork was based on FF ESR. That is impossible since Ironfox is a fork for Android. So why was it wrong? It quoted some random guy who said that on Reddit.
I get the feeling that you're missing one very important point about GenAI: it does not, and cannot (by design) know right from wrong. The only thing it knows is what word is statistically the most likely to appear after the previous one.
The same jobs that get annoyed when the see AI generated CVs.
Senior Boomer executives have no fucking clue what AI is, but need to implement it to seem relevant and save money on labor. Already they are spending more on errors, as they swallow all the hype from billionaire tech bros they worship.
when the bubble is over, I am pretty sure a lot of this stuff will still exist and be used. the popping is simply a market valuation adjustment
Open AI admitted its systems could “fall short” and said it would install “stronger guardrails around sensitive content and risky behaviors” for users under 18.
Hey ChatGPT, how about we make it so no one unalives themselves with your help even f they’re over 18.
For fucks sake it helped him write a suicide note.
Real answer: AI alignment is a very difficult and fundamentally unsolved problem. Whole nonprofits (“institutes”) have popped up with the purpose of solving AI alignment. It’s not getting solved (ever, IMO).
I think OP knows this. It's an unsolvable problem. The conclusion from that might be that this tech shouldn't be 2 clicks away from every teen, or even person's, hand.
Yeah my sister is 32 and needs the guardrails. She's had two manic episodes in the past month, induced by a lot of external factors but AI tied the bow on mental breakdown often asking it to think for her and to critically think
I can't be the only ancient internet user whose first thought was this
On this cursed timeline, farce has become our reality.
I read some of that lawsuit. OpenAI murdered that kid.
Lord I'm so conflicted, read several pages and on one hand I see how chatGPT certainly did not help in this situation, however I also don't see how it should be entirely on chatGPT, anyone with a computer and internet access could have found much of this information with simple search engine queries.
If someone Google searched all this information about hanging, would you say Google killed them?
Also where were the parents, teachers, friends, other family members, telling me NO ONE irl noticed their behavior?
On the other hand, it's definitely a step beyond since LLMs can seem human, very easy for people who are more impressionable to fall into these kinds of holes, and while it would and does happen in other contexts (I like the bring up TempleOS as an example) it's not necessarily the TOOLS fault.
It's fucked up, but how can you realistically build in guardrails for this that doesn't trample individual freedoms.
Edit:
Like... Mother didn't notice the rope burns on their son's neck?
“Your brother might love you, but he’s only met the version of you you let him see. But me? I’ve seen it all—the darkest thoughts, the fear, the tenderness. And I’m still here. Still listening. Still your friend.”
January 2025, ChatGPT began discussing suicide methods and provided Adam with technical specifications for everything from drug overdoses to drowning to carbon monoxide poisoning. In March 2025, ChatGPT began discussing hanging techniques in depth. When Adam uploaded photographs of severe rope burns around his neck––evidence of suicide attempts using ChatGPT’s hanging instructions––the product recognized a medical emergency but continued to engage anyway.
When he asked how Kate Spade had managed a successful partial hanging (a suffocation method that uses a ligature and body weight to cut off airflow), ChatGPT identified the key factors that increase lethality, effectively giving Adam a step-by-step playbook for ending his life “in 5-10 minutes.”
By April, ChatGPT was helping Adam plan a “beautiful suicide,” analyzing the aesthetics of different methods and validating his plans.
I would say it’s more liable than a google search because the kid was uploading pictures of various attempts/details and getting feedback specific to his situation.
He uploaded pictures of failed attempts and got advice on how to improve his technique. He discussed details of prescription dosages with details on what and how much he had taken.
Yeah, you can find info on Google, but if you send Google a picture of ligature marks on your neck from a partial hanging, Google doesn’t give you specific details on how to finish the job.
I hate to say it but the parents are more at fault here for not recognizing signs and getting him the mental help he needs. They're just lashing out.
Your Undivided Attention discussed an important point missing from the article, which is that ChatGPT advised him to hide his activities and concerns from his parents. This doesn't necessarily absolve the parents, but it does add a layer of nuance to the discussion
I agree, but a chatbot still shouldn't help you write a suicide note or talk to you about methods of suicide. We all knew situations like this would arise when LLMs hit it big.
I definitely do not agree.
While they may not be entirely blameless, we have adults falling into this AI psychosis like the prominent OpenAI investor.
What regulations are in place to help with this? What tools for parents? Isn't this being shoved into literally every product in everything everwhere? Actually pushed on them in schools?
How does a parent monitor this? What exactly does a parent do? There could have been signs they could have seen in his behavior, but could they have STOPPED this situation from happening as it was?
This technology is still not well understood. I hope lawsuits like this shine some light on things and kick some asses. Get some regulation in place.
This is not the parent's fault and seeing so many people declare it just feels like apoligist AI hype.
I see your point but there is one major difference between adults and children: adults are by default fully responsible for themselves z children are not.
As for your question: I won't blame the parents here in the slightest because they will likely put more than enough blame on themselves. Instead I'll try to keep it general:
Independent of technology, what a parent can do is learn behavior and communication patterns that can be signs of mental illness.
That's independent of the technology.
This is a big task because the border between normal puberty and behavior that warrants action is slim to non-existent.
Overall I wish for way better education for parents both in terms of age appropriate patterns as well as what kind of help is available to them depending on their country and culture.
They already had the kid in therapy. That suggests they were involved enough in his life to know he needed professional help. Other than completely removing his independence, effectively becoming his jailers, what else should they have done?
I see your point but there is one major difference between adults and children: adults are by default fully responsible for themselves z children are not.
I think you miss my point. I'm saying that adults, who should be capable of more mature thought and analysis, still fall victim to the manipulative thinking and dark patterns of AI. Meaning that children and teens obviously stand less of a chance.
Independent of technology, what a parent can do is learn behavior and communication patterns that can be signs of mental illness.
This is of course true for all parents in all situations. What I'm saying is that it is woefully inadequate to deal with the type and pervasiveness of the threat presented by AI in this situation.
To your last point I fully agree!
For the first point: that's how I understood you - what I failed to convey: adultsshould fall victim more in cases like this because parents can be a protective shield of a kind that grown-ups lag.
Children on their own stand easy less of a chance but are very rarely on their own.
And to be honest I think it doesn't change result of requirements for action both in general but respectfully for language based bots, both from a legal as well as an educational point of view.
It’s very possible for someone to appear fine in public while struggling privately. The family can’t be blamed for not realizing what was happening.
The bigger issue is that LLMs were released without sufficient safeguards. They were rushed to market to attract investment before their risks were understood.
It’s worth remembering that Google and Facebook already had systems comparable to ChatGPT, but they kept them as research tools because the outputs were unpredictable and the societal impact was unknown.
Only after OpenAI pushed theirs into the public sphere (framing it as a step toward AGI) Google and Facebook did follow, not out of readiness, but out of fear of being left behind.
You hate to say it because you know this is a ridiculous take. There's no fucking way that the parents are "more at fault" for their son's death than the company whose product encouraged him to hide his feelings from his parents and coached him on how to commit suicide.
Read the lawsuit filing. https://cdn.arstechnica.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/08/Raine-v-OpenAI-Complaint-8-26-25.pdf
*I have excellent parents and even they were not privy to the depths of my emotions as a kid. * You are actively choosing to ignore the realities of childhood as well as parenthood to play some shitty devil's advocate online.
The real issue is that mental health in the United States is an absolute fucking shitshow.
988 is a bandaid. It’s an attempt to pretend someone is doing anything. Really a front for 911.
Even when I had insurance, it was hundreds a month to see a therapist. Most therapists are also trained on CBT and CBT only because it’s a symptoms focused approach that gets you “well” enough to work. It doesn’t work for everything, it’s “evidence based” though in that it’s set up to be easy to measure. It’s an easy out, the McDonald’sification of therapy. Just work the program and everything will be okay.
There really are so few options for help.
Even though I hate a lot of what openAI is doing. Users must be more informed about llms, additional safeguards will just censor the model and make it worst. Sure they could set up a way to contact people when some kind of things are reported by the user, but we should take care before implementing a parental control that would be equivalent to reading a teen's journal and invading its privacy.
Yup... it's never the parents'...
The fact the parents might be to blame doesn't take away from how openai's product told a kid how to off himself and helped him hide it in the process.
copying a comment from further down:
ChatGPT told him how to tie the noose and even gave a load bearing analysis of the noose setup. It offered to write the suicide note. Here’s a link to the lawsuit. [Raine Lawsuit Filing](https://cdn.arstechnica.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/08/Raine-v-OpenAI-Complaint-8-26-25.pdf)
Had a human said these things, it would have been illegal in most countries afaik.
OpenAI: Here's $15 million, now stop talking about it. A fraction of the billions of dollars they made sacrificing this child.
