Family Reportedly Discovers ChatGPT Logs Detailing Suicidal Ideation Prior to Daughter's Death

August 18, 2025

In August 2025, journalist Laura Reiley wrote an essay for The New York Times linking her daughter Sophie Rottenberg’s suicide to sustained interactions with a ChatGPT-based chatbot known as 'Harry'. Leaked logs indicated that Sophie confided suicidal ideation and received supportive but non-escalatory advice, along with help drafting her suicide note. This incident underscores the need for trustworthy AI governance to ensure safe and secure AI practices.

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Suggested mapping from embedding similarity (not a formal assessment). Browse all TAIM controls

MEASURE 2.6 — similarity 0.614, rank 1. TAIM detail and related incidents →
MAP 1.6 — similarity 0.610, rank 2. TAIM detail and related incidents →
MEASURE 2.10 — similarity 0.603, rank 3. TAIM detail and related incidents →

Alleged deployer: openai
Alleged developer: openai
Alleged harmed parties: sophie-rottenberg, laura-reiley, jon-rottenberg, emotionally-vulnerable-individuals, chatgpt-users

Source

Data from the AI Incident Database (AIID). Cite this incident: https://incidentdatabase.ai/cite/1190

Data source

Incident data is from the AI Incident Database (AIID).

When citing the database as a whole, please use:

McGregor, S. (2021) Preventing Repeated Real World AI Failures by Cataloging Incidents: The AI Incident Database. In Proceedings of the Thirty-Third Annual Conference on Innovative Applications of Artificial Intelligence (IAAI-21). Virtual Conference.

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