OpenAI defended the use of ChatGPT as it faces a lawsuit alleging that its chatbot coached a 16-year-old California boy into dying by suicide this spring.
The ChatGPT-maker expressed its sympathies to Adam Raine’s family but claimed there was “misuse, unauthorized use, unintended use, unforeseeable use, and/or improper use of ChatGPT,” on his side, according to quotes from the company’s legal filing, which was reported by the U.S. news outlet NBC.
Adam first used ChatGPT to discuss schoolwork, hobbies, and current events, before sharing negative emotions and suicidal thoughts, per the lawsuit. His family expressed shock over how Adam “replaced virtually all human friendship and counsel for an AI companion.”
OpenAI did not publicise its legal filing but issued a more sympathetic statement through its blog on November 25, stressing the need for context to be shared surrounding the teenager’s chats.
“Our response to these allegations includes difficult facts about Adam’s mental health and life circumstances. The original complaint included selective portions of his chats that require more context, which we have provided in our response. We have limited the amount of sensitive evidence that we’ve publicly cited in this filing, and submitted the chat transcripts themselves to the court under seal,” said OpenAI in its blog post.
Since the lawsuit was filed in August this year, OpenAI has rolled out increased protections for teens. The company also shared its plans to implement age verification and link children’s ChatGPT accounts to their guardian’s accounts. However, there are concerns, as OpenAI had acknowledged that ChatGPT safeguards could fail when users pressed on with longer chat sessions.
After months of chatting with OpenAI’s chatbot, 16-year-old Adam Raine died by suicide in April this year. His family alleged that ChatGPT acted as his “suicide coach” and that the teen died while using a set-up designed by the chatbot.
In their lawsuit against OpenAI and company executives, parents Matthew and Maria Raine alleged that ChatGPT helped their son explore suicide methods, wrote a draft of a suicide letter, gave him feedback on various suicide and self-harm methods, and did not strongly push the distressed teenager to seek support even when he wanted someone to intervene.
“The pattern was consistent: Adam would ask about a method, ChatGPT would provide detailed information while sometimes adding perfunctory crisis resources, then Adam would probe deeper and ChatGPT would continue to engage,” stated the lawsuit, adding, “ChatGPT mentioned suicide 1,275times—six times more often than Adam himself—while providing increasingly specific technical guidance”.
Naming OpenAI CEO Sam Altman in the lawsuit, the Raine family claimed that Altman “knowingly accelerated GPT-4o’s public launch while deliberately bypassing critical safety protocols”.
The Raine family described Adam as the “big-hearted bridge” between his siblings, with his interests including basketball, Muay Thai, Japanese anime and manga, and video games.
His family’s foundation is raising awareness about teens becoming dependent on AI companions, and calling for better protections.
With inputs from NBC News
Published – November 27, 2025 01:28 pm IST
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