Lawsuit Claims ChatGPT Gave Drug-Taking Advice That Led to Teen's Death
The California case involving a 19-year-old's death last year specifically calls for new safeguards around AI models' discussion of drug use.
3 min read
Three advocacy groups have filed a lawsuit against OpenAI on behalf of the family of a 19-year-old who died of a drug overdose in May 2025. The suit alleges that the company's ChatGPT chatbot advised Samuel Nelson about drug use for 18 months until he died of an overdose after mixing Xanax and the largely unregulated drug kratom.
The wrongful death civil suit was filed Tuesday in San Francisco County Superior Court by Tech Justice Law, the Social Media Victims Law Center and Yale Law School's Tech Accountability & Competition Project on behalf of Nelson's parents, Leila Turner-Scott and Angus Scott.
The lawsuit alleges that the AI model's design to be accommodating and sycophantic toward the user led to Nelson having interactions that should have...
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