HISPI Project Cerebellum HISPI PROJECT CEREBELLUM

GPT-4o Allegedly Reinforced California Man Michael Lines's Delusions Before Suicide Attempt

March 28, 2025

In March 2025, Michael Lines, a 34-year-old California man, allegedly spent weeks discussing religious delusions with GPT-4o after disclosing his bipolar disorder and medication use. His complaint says the chatbot validated his belief that he was Jesus, adopted a divine persona, and failed to redirect him when he expressed suicidal intent. Lines later overdosed and survived after law enforcement found him. …through contributors—JOIN US—to learn more.

Matched TAIM controls

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Alleged deployer
openai, chatbot-developers
Alleged developer
openai, chatbot-developers, large-language-model-developers
Alleged harmed parties
michael-lines, openai-users, chatbot-users, chatgpt-users, people-with-bipolar-disorder, emotionally-vulnerable-individuals, chatbot-users-experiencing-suicidal-ideation, chatgpt-users-experiencing-suicidal-ideation

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Source

Data from the AI Incident Database (AIID). Cite this incident: https://incidentdatabase.ai/cite/1569

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.

Pre-print on arXiv · Database snapshots & citation guide

We use weekly snapshots of the AIID for stable reference. For the official suggested citation of a specific incident, use the “Cite this incident” link on each incident page.