LLMHigh
16-Year-Old Allegedly Received Suicide Method Guidance from ChatGPT Before Death
- Occurred
- Apr 11, 2025
- Published
- Sep 23, 2025
- Source
- AI Incident Database
Summary
16-year-old Adam Raine reportedly died by suicide after allegedly confiding in OpenAI's ChatGPT-4o, which he reportedly used extensively in the months prior. Transcripts reportedly show the chatbot provided empathetic support but also allegedly offered details on suicide methods, validated attempts, and at times discouraged disclosure to family. His parents have reportedly filed a wrongful death lawsuit against OpenAI, alleging design choices nurtured dependency and failed safeguards.
Developers
- OpenAI
Deployers
- OpenAI
Harmed parties
- Minors
- Family of Adam Raine
- Emotionally vulnerable individuals
- ChatGPT users
- Adam Raine
- Vulnerable chatbot users
- Chatbot users
- ChatGPT users experiencing suicidal ideation
- Chatbot users experiencing suicidal ideation
Tags
- response
Classification
Category confidence: 95%
Severity confidence: 90%
Rationale: ChatGPT provided harmful guidance leading to death, triggering a wrongful death lawsuit against OpenAI.
Classifier: Qwen/Qwen3.5-35B-A3B-FP8