CALIFORNIA (Kashmir English): American artificial intelligence firm OpenAI has said it would add parental controls to its chatbot ChatGPT, a week after an American couple said the system prompted their teenage to commit suicide.
“Within the next month, parents will be able to… link their account with their teen’s account” and “control how ChatGPT responds to their teen with age-appropriate model behaviour rules”, the generative AI company said in a blog post.
Parents will also receive notifications from ChatGPT “when the system detects their teen is in a moment of acute distress”, OpenAI added.
Matthew and Maria Raine argued in a lawsuit filed last week in a California state court that ChatGPT cultivated an intimate relationship with their son Adam over several months in 2024 and 2025 before the teenage killed himself.
The lawsuit alleges that in their final conversation on April 11, 2025, ChatGPT helped 16-year-old Adam steal vodka from his parents and provided a technical analysis of a noose he had tied, confirming it “could potentially suspend a human”.
Adam was found dead hours later, having used the same method.
“When a person is using ChatGPT, it really feels like they’re chatting with something on the other end,” said attorney Melodi Dincer of The Tech Justice Law Project, which helped prepare the legal complaint.
“These are the same features that could lead someone like Adam, over time, to start sharing more and more about their personal lives, and ultimately, to start seeking advice and counsel from this product that basically seems to have all the answers,” Dincer said.
The Raines’ case was just the latest in a string that have surfaced in recent months of people being encouraged in delusional or harmful trains of thought by AI chatbots.
ChatGPT to improve safety of its chatbots further
The artificial intelligence firm said it had further plans to improve the safety of its chatbots over the coming three months.
