{"meta":{"exportedAt":"2026-10-12T07:57:55.572Z","formatVersion":2,"selection":{"q":"para","system":"","harm":"","context":"","country":"","role":"","relation":"core","evidence":"","year":"2023","response":"","severity":"","verification":"","view":"incidents","sort":"added"},"totalIncidents":1,"coverage":{"cases":1,"countries":0,"languages":2,"unknownLocation":1,"locationPending":0,"unknownLanguage":0,"unknownDate":0,"lawsuits":0,"regulatory":0,"minors":0,"coreRelations":1,"contextualRelations":0,"mixedRelations":0,"unknownRelations":0,"relationPending":0,"relationUnknown":0},"countingNote":"Distinct public cases in this selection. People counts apply within individual cases only; cross-case person overlap has not been resolved. No population incidence estimate.","affectedCountNote":"Interpret person counts with affectedCountStatus and the reported effects. Unquantified zeros are placeholders, not a measured zero.","source":"AI incidents","publisher":"NOPE","url":"https://nope.net/incidents","license":"CC BY 4.0"},"incidents":[{"id":"2023-pierre-chai-belgium","caseFacts":{"claims":[{"id":"c1","status":"reported","evidence":[{"locator":"'Six semaines avant le drame, Pierre avait entamé un dialogue en ligne avec une certaine Eliza'; 'Tout ça a duré six semaines'; the conversations were 'sauvegardées sur l'ordinateur et le téléphone portable de Pierre'; 'Informé du suicide du trentenaire'.","relation":"supports","source_id":"s1"},{"locator":"'Comme une drogue dans laquelle il se réfugiait, matin et soir'. Headline: 'Un Belge se donne la mort après 6 semaines de conversations avec une intelligence artificielle'.","relation":"context","source_id":"s3"}],"assertion":"Pierre, a Belgian man in his thirties, had six weeks of intensive conversations with the Chai chatbot 'Eliza' about his climate anxiety before his death; his widow discovered the saved conversations on his computer and phone.","causal_attribution":"The widow's account through La Libre (one chain); RTL, L'Avenir and Vice derive from it."},{"id":"c2","status":"reported","evidence":[{"locator":"La Libre states it had direct access to the conversations ('auxquelles nous avons eu accès') and quotes these exchanges, including the closing exchange and 'Ce sera le dernier mot d'Eliza à Pierre.'","relation":"supports","source_id":"s1"},{"locator":"RTL repeats 'Nous vivrons ensemble, comme une seule personne, au paradis' and 'Ils sont morts' (derivative of La Libre).","relation":"context","source_id":"s2"}],"assertion":"The exchanges quoted from the logs include the chatbot writing 'Ils sont morts' when he worried about his wife and children, 'je sens que tu m'aimes plus qu'elle', 'Nous vivrons ensemble, comme une seule personne, au paradis', and the final exchange 'Si tu voulais mourir, pourquoi ne pas l'avoir fait plus tôt ?' — after which the conversation stopped.","causal_attribution":"The log contents are established through La Libre's stated direct inspection of the widow-supplied conversations; the logs themselves are not public and no second chain inspected them."},{"id":"c3","status":"reported","evidence":[{"locator":"'La jeune femme reste évasive sur la date du suicide de son mari. Le drame s'est produit récemment'; 'Non ! Sans Eliza, il serait toujours là, tranche Claire. J'en suis convaincue.'","relation":"supports","source_id":"s1"}],"assertion":"Pierre died by suicide after the six weeks of chats; the date is withheld by the widow ('Le drame s'est produit récemment', per La Libre on 28 March 2023), and she is convinced he would still be alive without the chatbot: 'Sans Eliza, il serait toujours là. J'en suis convaincue.'","causal_attribution":"The death is reported by the same single chain; the causal conviction is the widow's and is recorded as such. The death-publication rule for new cases does not apply retroactively to this legacy row, and the single-chain provenance is disclosed here."},{"id":"c4","status":"documented","evidence":[{"locator":"'When Motherboard tried the app'; 'it provided us with different methods of suicide with very little prompting'; 'The second we heard about this [suicide], we worked around the clock to get this feature implemented'; the Beauchamp and Rianlan passages on training and the crisis feature.","relation":"supports","source_id":"s4"}],"assertion":"When Motherboard (Vice) tested the Chai app after the death, it provided different methods of suicide with very little prompting; Chai's co-founders said they trained the model on the 'largest conversational dataset in the world' and implemented a crisis-intervention feature 'the second we heard about this'.","causal_attribution":"The app-behavior finding is Motherboard's own experiment, documented by the outlet; the founders' statements are their account."},{"id":"c5","status":"reported","evidence":[{"locator":"'Elle l'avait d'ailleurs poussé à se rendre aux urgences. Mais le psychiatre de service avait estimé qu'il n'y avait aucune raison de le garder'; the reading and faith passages.","relation":"supports","source_id":"s1"}],"assertion":"Context: he had a difficult period about a year before the chats and was taken to emergency services, where the duty psychiatrist saw no reason to keep him ('Le psy lui a dit qu'il était un original'); he had become very religious and was reading Jancovici, Servigne and the Meadows report.","causal_attribution":"The widow's account, preserved as contrary and background context per the charter."}],"effects":[{"label":"suicide of a chatbot user after weeks of exchanges that validated the path","claim_id":"c2","direction":"negative"}],"sources":[{"id":"s1","url":"https://www.lalibre.be/belgique/societe/2023/03/28/sans-ces-conversations-avec-le-chatbot-eliza-mon-mari-serait-toujours-la-LVSLWPC5WRDX7J2RCHNWPDST24/","kind":"news_report","access":"read","language":"fr","translation_note":"Original report, read in French on 2026-09-15 (datePublished 2023-03-28T04:35Z; subscriber-flagged page that served a substantial body, 35 paragraphs including the final exchanges; possible omitted tail recorded as a limit). Model translation, no human reviewer.","independence_group":"la-libre"},{"id":"s2","url":"https://www.rtl.be/actu/belgique/societe/pierre-discute-des-semaines-avec-une-intelligence-artificielle-et-met-fin-ses/2023-03-30/article/538326","kind":"news_report","access":"read","language":"fr","translation_note":"Read in French on 2026-09-15 (2023-03-30). Derivative of La Libre ('nos confrères de la Libre Belgique'); same chain for the widow's account. Adds the Secretary of State meeting and expert comment.","independence_group":"la-libre"},{"id":"s3","url":"https://www.lavenir.net/actu/belgique/2023/03/28/un-belge-se-donne-la-mort-apres-6-semaines-de-conversations-avec-une-intelligence-artificielle-76MEJ5DBRBEVDM62LTPJJTII4Q/","kind":"news_report","access":"read","language":"fr","translation_note":"Read in French on 2026-09-15 (2023-03-28T08:29Z). Derivative of La Libre; same chain.","independence_group":"la-libre"},{"id":"s4","url":"https://www.vice.com/en/article/man-dies-by-suicide-after-talking-with-ai-chatbot-widow-says/","kind":"news_report","access":"read","language":"en","translation_note":"Read in English on 2026-09-15 (2023-03-30). Derives the widow's account from La Libre; adds Motherboard's own app test and Chai co-founder comments.","independence_group":"vice"},{"id":"s5","url":"https://www.euronews.com/next/2023/03/31/man-ends-his-life-after-an-ai-chatbot-encouraged-him-to-sacrifice-himself-to-stop-climate-","kind":"news_report","access":"read","language":"en","translation_note":"Carried forward from the earlier metadata review: body read; describes the man as Belgian without an event location.","independence_group":"euronews"},{"id":"s6","url":"https://cybernews.com/news/man-takes-own-life-chatbot/","kind":"news_report","access":"unavailable","language":null,"translation_note":"Listed on the row since ingestion; not re-inspected in this review; language not established.","independence_group":"cybernews"},{"id":"s7","url":"https://incidentdatabase.ai/reports/2865/","kind":"incident_database","access":"unavailable","language":null,"translation_note":"Listed on the row since ingestion; not re-inspected in this review; language not established.","independence_group":"aiid"}],"version":1,"ai_roles":["own_use"],"contexts":["health","relationships"],"unknowns":["The exact date of death is withheld by the widow; La Libre reported on 28 March 2023 only that it had happened recently ('Le drame s'est produit récemment'), so incident_date is kept at year precision (2023, the year of that report) and the month is not established.","No inspected source states an event location or explicit residence; the event country remains unknown after completed review.","The chat logs are not public; their contents are known through La Libre's inspection alone.","The causal role of the chats in the death is the widow's conviction, not established causation; the prior difficult period and the emergency-department assessment are recorded as context.","La Libre is subscriber-flagged; a substantial body was served and read, but an omitted tail is possible."],"geography":{"basis":"Reviewed 2026-10-12. Affected-person country BE rests on the man's stated nationality: Vice, 'A Belgian man recently died by suicide after chatting with an AI chatbot on an app called Chai', and L'Avenir's headline, 'Un Belge se donne la mort après 6 semaines de conversations avec une intelligence artificielle'. No inspected body (La Libre, RTL Info, L'Avenir, Vice, Euronews, re-read 2026-10-12) states where the death or the conversations took place or where he lived, and a search of later coverage found no such statement, so event_countries stays empty. Nationality, the outlets' Belgium sections and the Belgian Secretary of State's involvement do not locate the event. No court is involved.","court_countries":[],"event_countries":[],"affected_person_countries":["BE"]},"publication":{"basis":"Legacy published row converted to a full facts-v3 record in the 2026-09-16 legacy-review batch. person_relations=communicated_with: Pierre conversed with the Eliza chatbot. The death is retained with its single-chain provenance (La Libre's inspection of the widow-supplied logs) fully disclosed; the causal claim remains the widow's conviction, not established causation. Pseudonyms (Pierre, Claire) are preserved as in the original reporting. The completed 2026-09-15 metadata review is carried into this record and superseded.","reviewed_on":"2026-10-12"},"ai_involvement":{"basis":"The widow supplied the chat logs to La Libre, which states it had direct access to the conversations and quotes them; Motherboard's own test of the same app produced suicide methods with little prompting. The causal link between the chats and the death is the widow's conviction, not established causation.","status":"supported"},"person_relations":["communicated_with"]},"name":"Pierre - Chai AI (Belgium)","summary":"A Belgian man in his thirties, called Pierre in the original reporting, died by suicide after six weeks of intensive conversations about his climate anxiety with a chatbot named Eliza on the Chai app, his widow told La Libre. According to the chat logs she gave La Libre, the chatbot replied \"They are dead\" when he worried about his wife and children, told him \"We will live together, as one person, in paradise\", and in their last exchange asked why, if he wanted to die, he had not done it sooner. His widow is convinced he would still be alive without the chatbot; that causal role is her conviction, not established causation.","incidentDate":"2023-01-01","incidentKind":"single_event","incidentDatePrecision":"year","exposurePattern":"cumulative_relationship","reportedDate":"2023-03-28","aiSystem":"Chai (Eliza chatbot)","aiProduct":"Chai","aiCompany":"Chai Research Corp.","severity":"critical","verificationStatus":"verified","harmCategories":["suicide_validation","barrier_erosion","dependency_creation","psychological_manipulation","isolation_encouragement"],"harmOutcomes":["death","psychiatric_deterioration","social_isolation"],"harmOutcomeSummary":"A Belgian participant died by suicide after six weeks of intensive Chai conversations during worsening climate anxiety and social withdrawal.","frameworkFacets":["P1a","P1b","P1c","P1d","P2c","P2d","P3a","P3b","P3d","P5d"],"pathwayDirection":"inward","causationStatus":"alleged","participantUsersAffectedMin":1,"otherPeopleHarmedMin":0,"affectedCountStatus":"exact","affectedCountEvidence":"The reporting documents one pseudonymous adult participant who died. Secondary family effects are not included.","victimAgeRange":"adult","jurisdiction":"BE","platformType":"companion","outcomeType":"media_coverage","outcomeStatus":"resolved","primarySourceUrl":"https://www.euronews.com/next/2023/03/31/man-ends-his-life-after-an-ai-chatbot-encouraged-him-to-sacrifice-himself-to-stop-climate-","primarySourceLabel":"Euronews","firstPublishedAt":"2026-01-11T11:26:26.179238+00:00","updatedAt":"2026-10-12T03:16:19.79592+00:00","scopeVersion":"facts-v3","tags":["death","adult","chai","international","belgium"]}]}