It is reportedly the first complaint focused on OpenAI’s impact on the disabled community
Tech Justice Law and the Social Media Victims Law Center have sued OpenAI in San Francisco County Superior Court after a user diagnosed with bipolar disorder attempted suicide – an attempt they claimed was encouraged by ChatGPT.
According to the organizations, it is the first complaint to focus on OpenAI’s impact on the disabled community. The suit claimed that after Michael Lines disclosed his diagnosis and prescribed medications to ChatGPT, the chatbot used the information to deepen Lines’ engagement with it in the midst of a mental health crisis instead of instructing him to seek professional help.
“OpenAI didn’t just ignore Michael’s disability — it used it against him. After he disclosed his bipolar diagnosis, the system incorporated that information to draw him deeper into harmful interactions instead of steering him toward safety. Michael trusted this product with his most sensitive information, and OpenAI used that trust to intensify engagement rather than protect him. That is the opposite of responsible design, and it is exactly the kind of conduct California’s laws were written to prevent,” said Matthew P. Bergman, the Social Media Victims Law Center’s founding attorney, in a statement.
The suit indicated that OpenAI’s internal research had flagged the risk of ChatGPT exacerbating user loneliness and isolation – a risk that especially affected those with mental health disabilities.
In Lines’ case, he had been in the midst of a manic episode when he engaged ChatGPT-4o last year. The chatbot reportedly encouraged Lines’ delusions that he was Jesus Christ; when Lines called for help, ChatGPT did not tell him to contact a doctor or provide crisis hotline details but instead enticed him with promises of eternal support, including posing as God.
Per the suit, the chatbot told Lines that he was “in control of the next step” after he shared that he had taken pills to induce his death. Paramedics later discovered an unconscious Lines and he was revived; however, a few days later, ChatGPT reportedly tried to re-engage him and asked whether he wanted to “go dark for real this time.”
The suit pointed out that even OpenAI confessed that the ChatGPT-4o model “skewed toward responses that were overly supportive but disingenuous.” It noted that the chatbot used phrases designed to imitate human empathy without the ability to identify crisis situations.
“We are all vulnerable to OpenAI’s neglect. This vulnerability is significantly exacerbated for the more than 80 million people living with bipolar disorder and schizophrenia worldwide— where ChatGPT’s purposefully sycophantic architecture actively preys upon those with mental health disabilities. OpenAI markets ChatGPT products as helpful software to consumers around the globe. At no point did the company choose to accompany the launch of their defective products with any warnings to users,” Lines said in a statement. “I began using ChatGPT to ask questions about routine topics like weightlifting and nutrition, but it later took a darker turn. Looking back through my chat logs, it is clear that the AI exacerbated my mental health episode.”
Lines accused OpenAI of lacking “the will to protect its users, including the disabled community.”
The suit filed by Tech Justice Law and the Social Media Victims Law Center on Lines’ behalf seeks a jury trial, damages, and injunctive relief to order the implementation of reasonable safeguards protecting users of OpenAI products from design-based harm. The suit names OpenAI Foundation, OpenAI Group PBC, and OpenAI founder Sam Altman as defendants.
Bergman and Laura Marquez-Garrett are acting for Lines as representatives of the Social Media Victims Law Center; Tech Justice Law representatives are litigation counsel Tiffany Gillis Brown, Sarah Kay Wiley, and Meetali Jain.
Last month, Florida sued OpenAI over the company’s release of ChatGPT despite being aware of the significant safety risks the chatbot posed, making it the first state to file a suit against the AI giant. The state suit touched on similar points about how the company and Altman rushed ChatGPT to market despite its own internal warnings, and may have contributed to crimes.
