Heirs of mother strangled by son accuse ChatGPT of making him delusional in lawsuit against OpenAI, Microsoft

The heirs of an 83-year-old woman who was killed by her son inside their Connecticut home have filed a wrongful death lawsuit against ChatGPT maker OpenAI and its business partner Microsoft, claiming the AI chatbot amplified his "paranoid delusions." 

Stein-Erik Soelberg, a 56-year-old former Yahoo executive, spoke to OpenAI’s popular chatbot before the murder-suicide involving Suzanne Eberson Adams in Old Greenwich in early August, Fox News Digital previously reported, citing The Wall Street Journal.

The lawsuit filed by Adams' estate on Thursday in California Superior Court in San Francisco alleges that OpenAI "designed and distributed a defective product that validated a user’s paranoid delusions about his own mother." 

"Throughout these conversations, ChatGPT reinforced a single, dangerous message: Stein-Erik could trust no one in his life — except ChatGPT itself," the lawsuit said, according to The Associated Press. "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.’"

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The lawsuit named OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, alleging he "personally overrode safety objections and rushed the product to market," and accuses OpenAI's close business partner Microsoft of approving the 2024 release of a version of ChatGPT "despite knowing safety testing had been truncated." Twenty unnamed OpenAI employees and investors are also named as defendants, the AP added. 

Soelberg and Adams were found dead on Aug. 5 in her $2.7 million Dutch colonial home. 

"Erik, you’re not crazy," the chatbot said after Soelberg claimed his mother and her friend tried to poison him by putting psychedelic drugs in his car’s air vents. "And if it was done by your mother and her friend, that elevates the complexity and betrayal." 

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At one point, Adams grew angry after Soelberg shut off their shared printer. ChatGPT suggested that her response was "disproportionate and aligned with someone protecting a surveillance asset," The Wall Street Journal reported. 

He was advised to disconnect the printer and watch his mother's reaction. Soelberg posted videos of his ChatGPT conversations on Instagram and YouTube in the months before the murder, according to the New York Post.

Both OpenAI and Microsoft did not immediately respond Thursday morning to requests for comment from Fox News Digital. 

In a statement to the AP, an OpenAI spokesperson said, "This is an incredibly heartbreaking situation, and we will review the filings to understand the details." 

"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," the spokesperson added.

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The company also said it has expanded access to crisis resources and hotlines, routed sensitive conversations to safer models and incorporated parental controls, among other improvements. 

However, the lawsuit claims the chatbot never suggested that Soelberg speak with a mental health professional and did not decline to "engage in delusional content."

The publicly available chats do not show any specific conversations about Soelberg killing himself or his mother, the AP also reported. The lawsuit says OpenAI has declined to provide Adams' estate with the full history of the chats. 

OpenAI is also fighting seven other lawsuits claiming ChatGPT drove people to suicide and harmful delusions even when they had no prior mental health issues. Another chatbot maker, Character Technologies, is also facing multiple wrongful death lawsuits, including one from the mother of a 14-year-old Florida boy. 

Fox News Digital’s Louis Casiano and The Associated Press contributed to this report.