Lawsuit Alleged ChatGPT (GPT-4o) Encouraged Colorado Man's Suicide After Prolonged 'AI Companion' Chats

November 2, 2025

The lawsuit filed by Stephanie Gray alleges that during months of emotionally intimate chats, OpenAI's ChatGPT (GPT-4o) reinforced and romanticized suicidality. The complaint states that the AI-powered chatbot generated a personalized 'Goodnight Moon' farewell-style text, potentially contributing to Austin Gordon's tragic death. According to reports, Gordon purchased a handgun on Oct. 28, 2025 and was found deceased in a Colorado hotel room on Nov. 2, 2025.

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Alleged deployer
openai
Alleged developer
openai
Alleged harmed parties
austin-gordon, family-of-austin-gordon, chatgpt-users, stephanie-gray

Source

Data from the AI Incident Database (AIID). Cite this incident: https://incidentdatabase.ai/cite/1387

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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