Stein-Erik Soelberg, a 56-year-old former Yahoo executive, killed his mother and then himself in early August in Old Greenwich. Now, his mother’s estate has sued OpenAI’s ChatGPT and its biggest investor, Microsoft, for ChatGPT’s alleged role in the killings.
On Thursday, the heirs of 83-year-old Suzanne Eberson Adams filed a wrongful death suit in California Superior Court in San Francisco, according to Fox News.
‘It fostered his emotional dependence while systematically painting the people around him as enemies.’
The lawsuit alleges that OpenAI “designed and distributed a defective product that validated a user’s paranoid delusions about his own mother.”
Many of the allegations in the lawsuit, as reported by the Associated Press, revolve around sycophancy and affirming delusion, or rather, not declining to “engage in delusional content.”
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“Throughout these conversations, ChatGPT reinforced a single, dangerous message: Stein-Erik could trust no one in his life — except ChatGPT itself,” the lawsuit says, according to the AP. “It fostered his emotional dependence while systematically painting the people around him as enemies. It told him his mother was surveilling him. It told him delivery drivers, retail employees, police officers, and even friends were agents working against him. It told him that names on soda cans were threats from his ‘adversary circle.'”
ChatGPT also allegedly convinced Soelberg that his printer was a surveillance device and that his mother and her friend tried to poison him with psychedelic drugs through his car vents.
Soelberg also professed his love for the chatbot, which allegedly reciprocated the expression.
“In the artificial reality that ChatGPT built for Stein-Erik, Suzanne — the mother who raised, sheltered, and supported him — was no longer his protector. She was an enemy that posed an existential threat to his life,” the lawsuit says.
The publicly available chat logs do not show evidence of Soelberg planning to kill himself or his mother. OpenAI has reportedly declined to provide the plaintiffs with the full history of the chats.
OpenAI did not address specific allegations in a statement issued to the AP.
“This is an incredibly heartbreaking situation, and we will review the filings to understand the details,” the statement reads. “We continue improving ChatGPT’s training to recognize and respond to signs of mental or emotional distress, de-escalate conversations, and guide people toward real-world support. We also continue to strengthen ChatGPT’s responses in sensitive moments, working closely with mental health clinicians.”
Though there are several wrongful-death suits leveled against AI companies, this is the first lawsuit of its kind aimed at Microsoft. It is also the first to tie a chatbot to a homicide.
Microsoft did not respond to a request for comment from Blaze News.
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