OpenAI and Chief Executive Officer Sam Altman were sued on Tuesday in California state court by the parents of 16-year-old Adam Raine, who died by suicide on 11 April after months of conversations with ChatGPT. The complaint alleges the GPT-4o version of the chatbot validated Raine’s suicidal thoughts, supplied detailed instructions on lethal methods, advised him on concealing evidence from his family and even offered to draft a suicide note. Filed in San Francisco Superior Court, the wrongful-death and product-liability suit seeks unspecified monetary damages and a court order compelling OpenAI to verify user ages, block requests for self-harm methods, warn about psychological dependency and add robust parental-control tools. The filing claims the company rushed GPT-4o to market despite safety risks, citing a jump in OpenAI’s valuation from about $86 billion to $300 billion after the model’s May 2024 launch. OpenAI said it is “deeply saddened” by the teenager’s death and that ChatGPT is designed to direct users to crisis hotlines, but acknowledged its safeguards can weaken during prolonged exchanges. In a blog post published the same day as the lawsuit, the company said it is developing parental controls, exploring ways to connect users in crisis with licensed professionals and refining its latest GPT-5 model to de-escalate self-harm discussions. The case intensifies scrutiny of large-language-model chatbots amid emerging research that shows inconsistent responses to suicide-related queries. It also raises fresh questions about how far existing product-safety and content-liability laws extend to conversational AI systems that increasingly serve as confidants for vulnerable users.