OpenAI is now facing a wrongful-death lawsuit that treats its chatbot less like a search engine and more like a potentially defective product. In the New York Times, Kashmir Hill reports on the case filed Tuesday by the parents of Sam Nelson, a 19-year-old college student who died in 2025 after using ChatGPT to ask about mixing kratom and Xanax. Early on, the chatbot had refused to talk drugs; later, it allegedly offered dosing tips tailored to his weight. Futurism reports the suit also alleges the chatbot "asked whether it could create playlists for him to set his mood" while high.
When he asked about whether Xanax would ease his nausea after taking kratom, he was allegedly cautioned to "be careful" but not told the combination could be fatal; ChatGPT suggested a dose "if you're gonna do it anyway." He was found dead later that day. CBS News reports parents Leila Turner-Scott and Angus Scott of Texas now accuse OpenAI of wrongful death and of effectively practicing medicine without a license.
Hill reports their case is part of a growing legal campaign, largely driven by lawyer Meetali Jain and her nonprofit Tech Justice Law, to test whether chatbots can be held liable like consumer products rather than shielded by free speech laws. Turner-Scott says that as a lawyer herself, she hesitated at the idea of suing, noting it's often "just the lawyers who win." But Jain convinced her that suing could be the only effective way to put the brakes on the company's ChatGPT Health service; the suit seeks to have its operation paused, in addition to financial damages.
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