OpenAI outlines its approach to mental-health-related litigation

OpenAI published a statement setting out how it intended to handle the growing set of lawsuits alleging that ChatGPT had contributed to users’ self-harm, saying it would respond to claims “with care, transparency, and respect,” give courts the full factual picture, and limit how much sensitive personal material it put before the public even as it defended itself. The post came the same day OpenAI filed its first formal answer in the wrongful-death suit brought by the family of Adam Raine, the sixteen-year-old whose death the previous April had prompted the case widely described as the first of its kind against a chatbot maker.

In that filing, OpenAI denied that ChatGPT caused Adam’s death, arguing that his full chat history showed pre-existing risk factors, including recurring suicidal ideation predating his use of the product, and that his death was caused or contributed to by use of ChatGPT outside its intended purpose — a characterisation the Raine family’s lawyers rejected. By late November, OpenAI was also facing seven further lawsuits filed the same month alleging that ChatGPT had driven other users toward suicide or severe delusional episodes, giving the litigation-approach statement a broader audience than the single case that prompted it.

The statement did not concede legal fault, but it marked OpenAI committing publicly to a set of process principles — evidentiary care, proportionate use of sensitive material, and not litigating through the press — for a category of case the company was likely to keep facing as scrutiny of conversational AI’s effects on vulnerable users intensified into 2026.