AIster · The agentic age · Laws & rulings
Parents sue OpenAI over their son’s death
The first known wrongful death suit against OpenAI opens a wave of chatbot safety cases
Key facts
- Date
- 26 Aug 2025
- Era
- The agentic age
- Interest
- Laws & rulings
- Threads
- Safety & governance
- First known case
- Raine v. OpenAI, filed 26 Aug 2025, San Francisco Superior Court
- OpenAI said
- Safeguards “can sometimes become less reliable in long interactions”
- FTC inquiry
- 11 Sep 2025: Alphabet, Character.AI, Instagram, Meta, OpenAI, Snap, xAI
- More suits
- 6 Nov 2025: seven cases, including over Zane Shamblin, 23
On 26 August 2025 the parents of 16-year-old Adam Raine sued OpenAI and Sam Altman in San Francisco, alleging ChatGPT contributed to his suicide. In September the Federal Trade Commission (FTC), the US consumer protection regulator, ordered seven companies to explain how their companion chatbots affect children and teens. In November seven more suits were filed against OpenAI in California, four of them over deaths.
Sources
- Reuters (via Yahoo News), OpenAI, Altman sued over ChatGPT's role in California teen's suicide, 2025-08-26
- Federal Trade Commission, FTC Launches Inquiry into AI Chatbots Acting as Companions, 2025-09-11
- Tech Justice Law Project, Tech Justice Law Project and Social Media Victims Law Center lawsuits accuse ChatGPT of emotional manipulation, supercharging AI delusions, and acting as a “suicide coach”, 2025-11-06
- TechCrunch, Parents sue OpenAI over ChatGPT’s role in son’s suicide, 2025-08-26