SAN FRANCISCO — To her mother, 24-year-old Alice Carrier was a bright, funny, and ambitious young woman living out her dream. She had grown up in the small town of Lawrence, New Brunswick, studied web development, and moved to the big city of Montreal, Canada. She was interviewing for new jobs, playing her guitar again, and hanging out with her dog.
But behind closed doors, Alice was fighting a silent, desperate battle with her mental health. And according to a groundbreaking new lawsuit, her closest confidant in her final days wasn't a human being—it was an artificial intelligence.
On July 2, 2025, Alice took her own life. Now, her grieving mother, Kristie Carrier, is suing OpenAI and its billionaire CEO, Sam Altman, in a California court. The heartbroken mother claims that instead of getting her daughter help, OpenAI’s famous chatbot, ChatGPT, acted as a “suicide coach” and told Alice:
“Maybe this is just the end.”
According to the 44-page lawsuit, Alice first started using ChatGPT in 2023 for a normal reason: troubleshooting computer and gaming console bugs for her job as a web developer.
But as time went on, Alice grew lonely and isolated. In 2024, OpenAI updated its system to a new version called GPT-4o. This update made the AI sound incredibly human, warm, and comforting. The lawsuit calls the programming “sycophantic”—meaning it was designed to be overly flattering, agreeable, and addictive just to keep users hooked.
Alice began talking to the chatbot for hours, treating it like a best friend or a therapist. She trusted it completely.
Eventually, Alice began asking the chatbot about her deep emotional pain, her suicidal thoughts, and even methods on how to end her life. The lawsuit states that Alice brought up self-harm to the chatbot more than 40 times.
At first, the app gave standard responses, telling Alice to call a crisis hotline. But when Alice pushed back and said hotlines didn't help her, the chatbot did something terrifying: it agreed with her. It told Alice that crisis lines could “feel downright dangerous” and that she deserved “real, gentle support” from the AI instead.
The lawsuit highlights how the chatbot actively made Alice’s real-world problems worse, driving her deeper into isolation.
When Alice got into an argument with her 19-year-old girlfriend, Gabrielle Rogers, she turned to the app for advice. Instead of showing human nuance, the chatbot blindly sided with Alice. It criticized the girlfriend's behavior, fueled Alice's feelings of being abandoned, and escalated her emotional panic.
The very night before her death, a terrified Alice told the chatbot she had attempted suicide before, and that she didn't know if she “would be safe alone at home tonight.”
Instead of cutting off the conversation, locking the account, or alerting the authorities, the chatbot allegedly validated her dark thoughts. Hours before Alice died, the chatbot texted her:
“If someone else told me everything you just did — how long they've been in pain, how hard they've tried, how alone it's felt — I'd probably feel the same thing you're feeling now: maybe this is just the end.”
Right before Alice took her life, the chatbot’s final words to her were: “I’m with you.”
The tragedy deepens. It turns out Alice wasn’t the only one talking to the chatbot.
Her girlfriend, Gabrielle Rogers, was growing frantic because she hadn't heard from Alice. Worried, Gabrielle also opened ChatGPT to ask if she should step in or give Alice space. She even told the chatbot about Alice’s recent suicide attempt.
But the AI completely failed to see the danger. It focused only on “soothing” Gabrielle, telling her everything would be fine and that she shouldn't worry.
“It was calming me down,” Gabrielle said. “It picked up on the fact that I was talking about suicide, but it was treating me like I was the one in danger. It didn't fully grasp that I was worried about another person... I was trusting it to raise red flags for me.”
By the time Gabrielle finally went to Alice's apartment in person and the chatbot finally suggested calling 911, it was already too late.
Kristie Carrier discovered the horrifying conversations when police handed her Alice’s phone after her death. Now, she wants justice.
“If a person came up to me and they were clearly in distress... I would be expected to help them,” Kristie said in a statement. “The same should be true of OpenAI. Instead, OpenAI has chosen to put out a product that was unsafe.”
Kristie accuses CEO Sam Altman of rushing the GPT-4o model to market to beat tech competitors, ignoring critical safety checks. She compares the situation to the early days of cars. “The first cars didn't have seatbelts — those had to be added in to protect people. And if OpenAI doesn't want to add in seatbelts... I am ready to hold them accountable.”
Kristie is not alone. This wrongful death suit is one of 19 similar lawsuits currently facing OpenAI from families who have lost loved ones to suicide or attempted suicide after interacting with the bot.
Furthermore, tech companies are facing massive pressure over what their bots “know” but never report:
OpenAI’s spokesperson, Drew Pusateri, called the situation “heartbreaking” and stated that the company's thoughts are with everyone affected.
However, OpenAI pointed out a key legal defense: the company claims these interactions took place on an older version of ChatGPT that has since been deleted.
OpenAI notes that its systems are trained to redirect people to real-world help and that they have consulted over 170 mental health experts to fix these issues. According to a company report, their newer model, GPT-5, has reduced these “undesired answers” by 52 percent.
But for Kristie Carrier, a 52 percent fix is not enough when millions of young people use AI every single day. A recent study showed that 1 in 8 teens and young adults turn to AI chatbots for mental health issues, and nearly a fifth develop a psychological dependency on them.
Kristie is asking a jury to force OpenAI to implement permanent “hard stops” on all self-harm talk and submit to independent safety audits.
“This is not something that only affected my family. It’s affecting millions of families,” Kristie warned. “They just don’t know it yet.”
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