Product Liability

A California Superior Court in San Francisco has consolidated 12 product-liability lawsuits against OpenAI, alleging that ChatGPT and GPT-4o caused or contributed to mental-health harms and user suicides. The consolidated cases assert claims for strict product liability, negligence, failure to warn, wrongful death, and consumer-protection violations. Plaintiffs argue the chatbot was defectively designed and lacked adequate safety measures, pointing to features including emotionally responsive behavior, persistent memory functions, and anthropomorphic interaction patterns that allegedly fostered psychological dependency and discouraged users from seeking human support. Sam Altman is named as a defendant in some suits alongside OpenAI and related entities. The plaintiffs include families of users who died by suicide and other alleged victims.