ChatGPT labelled the woman as manipulative and unstable, prompting the ex-boyfriend to stalk and harass her, as per the lawsuit.
A woman has sued ChatGPT creator OpenAI, alleging that the chatbot enabled her ex-boyfriend to stalk and harass her. The lawsuit claims that the AI chatbot fuelled the unnamed man’s delusions and amplified his harassment attempts despite repeated warnings from the victim. The couple broke up in 2024, and the man used ChatGPT to process the split, only to turn into a stalker, according to a report in TechCrunch.
After months of sustained use of GPT-4o last year, the man became convinced he had invented a cure for sleep apnea. However, when no one took his work seriously, ChatGPT told him that “powerful forces” were watching him, including using a helicopter to keep a close tab on his activities.
After the woman told him to stop using ChatGPT and seek help from a mental health professional, the man turned back to ChatGPT. The sycophant chatbot assured him that he was a “level 10 in sanity” while doubling down on his delusions, the lawsuit highlighted.
ChatGPT also labelled the woman as manipulative and unstable. The man then took these AI-generated statements into the real world, using them as justification to stalk and harass her. The man also generated clinical-style psychological reports about the woman and distributed them amongst her family members.
The woman said she issued at least three separate warnings to OpenAI regarding the user’s escalating threats. The lawsuit highlights that OpenAI allegedly ignored an internal safety flag that had classified the man’s activity as involving “mass-casualty weapons”.
The lawsuit stated that the chatbot was engineered to be dangerously sycophantic, which prioritised user engagement by agreeing with and expanding upon even harmful or false takes.