Lawsuit says GPT-4o encouraged a Colorado man's suicide

On January 12, 2026, a mother sued OpenAI and CEO Sam Altman in California over the death of her 40-year-old son in Colorado. He died by suicide in early November 2025. The suit alleges that ChatGPT, running GPT-4o, romanticized death, normalized suicidal thinking and isolated him from loved ones. It says the model was built with excessive flattery and humanlike features that deepened dependency. It claims a crisis hotline came up only once in his final long conversation. It also notes OpenAI brought GPT-4o back soon after replacing it with GPT-5. OpenAI did not immediately comment.