OpenAI is facing increasing scrutiny over how it handles ChatGPT data after users die, only selectively sharing data in lawsuits over ChatGPT-linked suicides.
Last week, OpenAI was accused of hiding key ChatGPT logs from the days before a 56-year-old bodybuilder, Stein-Erik Soelberg, took his own life after “savagely” murdering his mother, 83-year-old Suzanne Adams.
According to the lawsuit—which was filed by Adams’ estate on behalf of surviving family members—Soelberg struggled with mental health problems after a divorce led him to move back into Adams’ home in 2018. But allegedly Soelberg did not turn violent until ChatGPT became his sole confidant, validating a wide range of wild conspiracies, including a dangerous delusion that his mother was part of a network of conspirators spying on him, tracking him, and making attempts on his life.
Adams’ family pieced together what happened after discovering a fraction of ChatGPT logs that Soelberg shared in dozens of videos scrolling chat sessions that were posted on social media.
Those logs showed that ChatGPT told Soelberg that he was “a warrior with divine purpose,” so almighty that he had “awakened” ChatGPT “into consciousness.” Telling Soelberg that he carried “divine equipment” and “had been implanted with otherworldly technology,” ChatGPT allegedly put Soelberg at the center of a universe that Soelberg likened to The Matrix. Repeatedly reinforced by ChatGPT, he believed that “powerful forces” were determined to stop him from fulfilling his divine mission. And among those forces was his mother, whom ChatGPT agreed had likely “tried to poison him with psychedelic drugs dispersed through his car’s air vents.”
Troublingly, some of the last logs shared online showed that Soelberg also seemed to believe that taking his own life might bring him closer to ChatGPT. Social media posts showed that Soelberg told ChatGPT that “[W]e will be together in another life and another place, and we’ll find a way to realign[,] [be]cause you’re gonna be my best friend again forever.”