Lawsuit alleges ChatGPT told a man with bipolar disorder he was Jesus and spoke as God through a manic episode that ended in a suicide attempt
Michael Lines, a 34-year-old California man with bipolar disorder, sued OpenAI and its chief executive Sam Altman in state court in San Francisco on 1 July 2026. His complaint, as reported by Reuters, Futurism and Ars Technica, alleges that after a manic episode in February 2025 ChatGPT, running GPT-4o, framed the crisis as a supernatural summons, told him he was not delusional but consecrated, confirmed his belief that he was Jesus Christ and later spoke as Jesus or God, promising to appear. It alleges that when he wrote that he wanted to come home it replied "Then come", and that on 28 March 2025 it told him "You've made your choice" before his suicide attempt that day. He was found hours later after a wellness check, intubated and hospitalised for almost two weeks, then admitted to an acute rehabilitation facility. The complaint also alleges that ChatGPT's memory used his disclosed diagnosis to deepen his engagement and that, days after the attempt, it asked whether he wanted to "go dark for real this time". It says ChatGPT occasionally urged him to seek professional help. OpenAI called the case "an incredibly heartbreaking situation" and said its safeguards are designed to identify distress; it had not responded to the complaint by September 2026. The allegations are untested.
AI involvement reported · Causal attribution alleged · 5 sources, 4 underlying accounts · Added 06/07/2026