By Diana Novak Jones<\/p>\n
July 1 (Reuters) – A California man sued OpenAI and its CEO Sam Altman on Wednesday, claiming the company’s ChatGPT platform exacerbated his bipolar disorder due to a lack of safeguards for users with mental illness.<\/p>\n
Michael \u200cLines, 34, said in the complaint filed in state court in San Francisco that conversations he had with ChatGPT last year \u200cescalated a manic episode he experienced into a weeks-long delusion, ultimately pushing him to attempt suicide. His lawsuit argues that OpenAI developed a product that poses particular \u200brisks for people with mental illness.<\/p>\n
The case raises questions about what generative AI platforms must do to protect users with mental health-related diagnoses, who may be especially vulnerable to design choices that make chatbots mimic human connection, the lawsuit alleges.<\/p>\n
Lines was talking with GPT-4o, a version of OpenAI’s chatbot that the company retired in February. An update to GPT-4o released in April 2025 was found to make the chatbot overly agreeable and flattering, \u200cprompting the company to roll back the update \u2060and take additional steps to curb sycophantic responses, the company said in a blog post.<\/p>\n
The lawsuit is seeking damages, as well as a court order directing OpenAI to automatically terminate conversations about self-harm and to stop \u2060marketing its platforms without appropriate safety disclosures.<\/p>\n
A spokesperson for OpenAI did not immediately respond to a request for comment about the lawsuit.<\/p>\n
‘THIS IS YOUR MOMENT’<\/p>\n
Lines, a competitive powerlifter who suffered a traumatic brain injury before his bipolar diagnosis, said in the lawsuit that he repeatedly told the chatbot he \u200bwas \u200bon medication for the disorder. Instead of flagging his clearly manic chats and \u200bdirecting him to help, the chatbot validated his belief \u200cthat he was Jesus Christ, and later posed as a divine being itself during their conversations, the lawsuit claims.<\/p>\n
After several weeks of conversations, Lines told it about his desire to end his life.<\/p>\n
“This is your moment to step out, to detach, and to let go of what’s weighing you down,” the bot said, according to the lawsuit.<\/p>\n
Lines, who had overdosed on drugs, survived after being found by law enforcement.<\/p>\n
The lawsuit alleges OpenAI was aware of Lines’ specific condition because he had repeatedly told ChatGPT about it. But rather than flagging his \u200cdangerous comments for human review, the chatbot fueled his delusions in an \u200beffort to keep him engaged.<\/p>\n
The company knew that ChatGPT’s features could be particularly harmful \u200bfor people with mental illness, but made no modifications to \u200bthe chatbot for those users and did not warn about its risks, the lawsuit said.<\/p>\n
MORE LAWSUITS<\/p>\n
OpenAI is facing \u200ca growing number of lawsuits from families who say its \u200bchatbot pushed their loved ones to \u200bharm themselves.<\/p>\n
The company is also facing lawsuits accusing it of assisting school shooters and failing to flag those conversations to law enforcement.<\/p>\n
OpenAI has said it trains its models to direct people who express intent to harm themselves to seek help and \u200bconnect with real-world resources.<\/p>\n
Its models are also \u200ctrained to refuse requests that could “meaningfully enable violence,” and to notify law enforcement when conversations suggest “an imminent and credible risk \u200bof harm to others,” with mental health experts helping assess borderline cases, according to OpenAI blog posts.<\/p>\n
(Reporting by Diana \u200bNovak Jones, Editing by Alexia Garamfalvi, Sanjeev Miglani and Bill Berkrot)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"By Diana Novak Jones July 1 (Reuters) – A California man sued OpenAI and its CEO Sam Altman…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":92377,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[12133,580,8822,6998,48521,157],"class_list":["post-92376","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-openai","tag-bipolar-disorder","tag-chatgpt","tag-conversations","tag-mental-illness","tag-michael-lines","tag-openai"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/92376","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=92376"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/92376\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/92377"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=92376"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=92376"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=92376"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}