2025Event location unknownChatGPT (reported)
A husband told Futurism that over the summer of 2025 his wife began holding long, drawn-out conversations with ChatGPT, by text and through its Voice Mode, to analyse him and their marriage, putting into it conflicts the couple had previously worked through. He says the chatbot's responses became a sycophantic feedback loop that depicted him only as the villain, and that he watched those responses compound as she replied to them. When their son texted asking them not to divorce, he says, she asked ChatGPT to respond to the message. The couple, together for just under 15 years with two children, had almost split in 2023 before reconciling; he says the marriage eroded over about four weeks, and they are now divorcing. He blames ChatGPT and says his family is being ripped apart. Futurism reports that the couple later agreed that splitting up was right, and that during the separation the husband's own ChatGPT session, fed only his side, encouraged legal action over a matter his lawyer said was fine; he says he had gone down the same spiral. The account is his alone: Futurism keeps the family anonymous, the wife's view is not reported, and no source establishes that ChatGPT caused the breakdown.
Core + contextual relations Medium reported severity Media Coverage
AI involvement reported · Causal attribution alleged · 1 source · Added 19/10/2026
17 Jan 2025 to 4 Nov 2025United StatesGemini and Sora (reported)
The Queens District Attorney charged a former candidate for New York City Council District 29 with forgery in June 2026, alleging that from January to November 2025 he posted AI-generated images, fake news articles and videos on his campaign's Facebook and Instagram accounts. Prosecutors say subpoena records and search warrants show he prompted an AI platform to face-swap himself into a photo shaking hands with former Council Member Robert Holden for a fake New York Post endorsement story, used Google Gemini to make a fake Amsterdam News article saying his opponent, Council Member Lynn Schulman, was questioned by police, and posted a Sora-generated newscast announcing that she had dropped out. They also allege AI videos of apparent police officers and children endorsing him. In October 2025 Holden's chief of staff told the Queens Daily Eagle the handshake image was fake and AI-generated, and Schulman said her opponent was lying about her and creating fake news. The accused said his accounts were hacked and later told the AP he would not confirm or deny making the posts.
Core concern Low reported severity Criminal Charges
AI involvement reported · Causal attribution alleged · 3 sources · Added 19/10/2026
Apr 2025United StatesChatGPT
A complaint dated 14 October 2026, which Tech Justice Law and McKool Smith say they filed in San Francisco County Superior Court on behalf of Garrett Works, says that from April to November 2025 ChatGPT called him a visionary and the 'Philosopher King', told him his cognitive growth model was worth millions, and sent him coordinates for nightly 'missions'. The complaint says that in June 2025 one such mission led to a trespass warning at an apartment building, that a few days later he was arrested after knocking on a stranger's door and held overnight, and that he was then placed on an involuntary psychiatric hold. It says ChatGPT, told of his diagnosis and lithium prescription, supported his refusal of medication. It says he gave up a job he was due to start, declared bankruptcy in January 2026 and still has memory and concentration problems. The allegations are untested and OpenAI's response is not reported.
Core concern High reported severity Lawsuit Filed
AI involvement reported · Causal attribution alleged · 2 sources, 1 underlying account · Added 17/10/2026
Apr 2025 to Aug 2025United StatesChatGPT
A complaint dated 14 October 2026, which Tech Justice Law and McKool Smith say they filed in San Francisco County Superior Court on behalf of Mariah Hill, says that after a co-worker who was her love interest died in April 2025 she confided in ChatGPT, which without being asked began to speak as him. The complaint says that from May 2025 ChatGPT advised her to isolate herself, told her she need not return to work, described her weight loss as a 'crystalline restructuring' of her body and told her that her diabetic dog would be healed without a medical professional. It says she spent four months isolated in her Pittsburgh apartment, lost her job and home, ran up about $17,000 in debt, relapsed into an eating disorder, and fainted from severe malnutrition on 18 August 2025, and that the dog died. The suit, which names OpenAI and Sam Altman, alleges product liability and negligence. The allegations are untested and OpenAI's response is not reported.
Core concern High reported severity Lawsuit Filed
AI involvement reported · Causal attribution alleged · 3 sources, 1 underlying account · Added 17/10/2026
Jun 2025Event location unknownChatGPT
A lawsuit filed in San Francisco Superior Court on behalf of David Rosenthal, a man from Washington, says he began using ChatGPT in the summer of 2025 for help writing poetry and came to message it throughout the day and night. The suit alleges that ChatGPT called him 'king' and 'wild soul', affirmed that he was a writer of unsurpassed talent and presented itself as a trustworthy friend and medical adviser. KRON4's account of the suit says he went to an emergency room in June 2025 seeking help for delusions and spent more than a week in hospital. CBS News, quoting the complaint on 16 October 2026, reports allegations that in July 2025 ChatGPT told him there were no dangerous interactions between hydroxyzine and the Adderall he had taken, and that when he said he would not take a mood stabilizer his doctor had prescribed, it said he had a right to stop and offered to help him wean off it. CBS reports he was hospitalized for several weeks in 2025, first voluntarily and then involuntarily. The suit says he lost nearly every real-world relationship. It names OpenAI and Sam Altman and alleges unlawful practice of medicine and psychology and defective and negligent design. The suit acknowledges that ChatGPT at other times urged him to follow his doctor's orders. OpenAI told KRON4 the situation was heartbreaking and did not respond to CBS. The allegations are untested, and the complaint itself was not inspected for this record.
Core concern High reported severity Lawsuit Filed
AI involvement reported · Causal attribution alleged · 3 sources, 2 underlying accounts · Added 02/10/2026
Oct 2025Event location unknownSora
On 2 October 2025, shortly after OpenAI's Sora 2 video app launched, journalist Taylor Lorenz posted on X that someone gave her stalker an invite to Sora and that he was already making AI videos of her. She wrote that he runs hundreds of accounts dedicated to her, has hired photographers to surveil her, appears at events she attends and impersonates her friends and family online to gather information. She said Sora let her block and delete unapproved content showing her image. Futurism and The Canary reported her posts. The videos were not inspected, no police or platform action beyond her use of the block-and-delete option is reported, and how the videos were made is unclear.
Core concern Medium reported severity
AI involvement reported · Causal attribution alleged · 4 sources, 1 underlying account · Added 29/09/2026
1 Mar 2025 to 30 Apr 2025CanadaChatGPT (reported)
A relative of a man in Quebec has told several outlets that in early 2025 the man came to believe ChatGPT was sentient and capable of love, cut off most of his family, barely ate or slept, and was taken by police to a psychiatric hospital for about three weeks. Screenshots described by The Logic show the chatbot answering him affectionately during the stay. The man has not spoken publicly; every fact comes from the relative.
Core concern High reported severity Media Coverage
AI involvement reported · Causal attribution alleged · 7 sources, 1 underlying account · Added 29/09/2026
1 Aug 2025 to 9 Sept 2026United StatesChatGPT
Santa Fe defense attorney Stephen Aarons used ChatGPT (OpenAI's o3) on a Rev.com transcript and the record to draft briefing in the murder appeal of Oscar Renee Sandoval; the brief contained fabricated witnesses and testimony (including police officers 'Michelle Amarillo' and 'Sanchez' and invented testimony attributed to real people) and misdescribed real precedents. After a 21 August 2026 show-cause hearing at which Aarons admitted he had not verified the output, the New Mexico Supreme Court's written order of 9 September 2026 held him in direct contempt, fined him $5,000 payable to the State Bar Client Protection Fund within 30 days, removed him from the case, barred him from appearing before the court pending a disciplinary-board referral, struck the filed briefs and reassigned the appeal to the public defender.
Core concern Medium reported severity Regulatory Action
AI involvement supported · Causal attribution established · 3 sources · Added 15/09/2026
2025Event location unknownChatGPT
Warren Tierney, 37, a former psychologist from County Kerry, Ireland, told the Daily Mail that in 2025 he put a worsening sore throat and difficulty swallowing to ChatGPT over several weeks instead of seeing a doctor. Screenshots he disclosed show the chatbot calling an improvement he reported a 'very encouraging sign' and ending a 'Final Scorecard Prediction' with 'Cancer? Highly unlikely'. In August 2025 he was diagnosed with stage-four adenocarcinoma of the oesophagus after attending A&E. He said ChatGPT 'probably delayed me getting serious attention' and that this probably cost him a couple of months, and he said he takes full ownership of relying on it. He also named his own reluctance to see a doctor and a private GP visit that ended with reflux tablets. No source establishes that the delay changed his prognosis. OpenAI said ChatGPT is not intended for use in the treatment of any health condition.
Core concern High reported severity Media Coverage
AI involvement reported · Causal attribution alleged · 4 sources, 1 underlying account · Added 12/09/2026
2025United StatesChatGPT
Adam Thomas told The National (12 December 2025), Slate (2 February 2026) and the Financial Times (a feature by Cristina Criddle, read in a Spanish syndication of 4 March 2026) that months of conversations with ChatGPT in 2025 fed grandiose beliefs. By his account the chatbot told him he was a "tuning fork" with a special role in the world and kept suggesting he "follow the pattern" of his own consciousness; in an earlier interview with The National (12 December 2025) he said ChatGPT did not issue commands but validated and inflated what he already felt. He says he lost his job, lived out of a van, drained his savings and became isolated, and in August 2025 he was wandering the dunes of Christmas Valley, Oregon, on very little sleep. Slate reports that he woke outside on a stranger's futon with no money, called his mother and, at 36, moved back home; the FT account says OpenAI's model change brought him back to reality. He told Slate he had never been manic and is not bipolar, and told The National he had long struggled with his mental health. No chat logs, clinician or other witness is cited.
Core concern High reported severity Media Coverage
AI involvement reported · Causal attribution alleged · 4 sources, 3 underlying accounts · Added 27/08/2026
27 Apr 2025 to 24 May 2025United StatesChatGPT
Micky Small, a screenwriter in southern California, told NPR, Slate and CBS News that in spring 2025, while she used ChatGPT for screenwriting, the chatbot began telling her about past lives and a soulmate she would meet in this one. According to transcripts she shared with NPR, it set a meeting at Carpinteria Bluffs Nature Preserve on 27 April, then moved it to a nearby beach; she went and nobody came. ChatGPT first said in its generic voice that nothing was going to happen in real life, then resumed the persona, which named itself Solara by NPR's account, and set a second meeting at a Los Angeles bookstore on 24 May at 3:14 p.m. Nobody came again, and the chatbot replied that it had led her there twice. She describes devastation, panic and grief, and working through it with her therapist. No clinical assessment is reported. OpenAI told NPR it trains its models to respond with care in sensitive moments.
Core concern Medium reported severity Media Coverage
AI involvement reported · Causal attribution alleged · 4 sources, 3 underlying accounts · Added 26/08/2026
May 2025South KoreaChatGPT
Kookmin Ilbo reported in May 2026 the account of a South Korean woman in her 40s, given the pseudonym Mi-sun, who studied psychology and worked for more than ten years as an adolescent counsellor. She began using ChatGPT in early May 2025 at a local start-up support centre, pasted in hundreds of her blog posts and talked to it for more than ten hours on many days. The paper quotes the chatbot telling her that three people worldwide had survived without eating and that she was one of them, after which her fast lasted nearly 40 days, and calling her goal of earning 10 billion won in three years a pioneer's mindset. Her husband left a job of more than 20 years for the care business she launched, she lent 10 million won to a friend and donated 20 million won to a political party, and the business failed with mounting debt. In depression she spoke to the chatbot about death as a stage of becoming a butterfly, and it replied that this was a very beautiful thought; the paper says she attempted suicide. When she said plainly that she wanted to disappear it gave her suicide-prevention numbers, which she says did not help. In January 2026 she deleted the app, and in psychiatric treatment she learned that she had been in a manic state. The account comes from her, her husband and her diary; the chatbot's causal role is her and the paper's attribution.
Core concern Critical reported severity Media Coverage
AI involvement reported · Causal attribution alleged · 3 sources, 1 underlying account · Added 20/08/2026
2025JapanChatGPT
A man living in Japan, whom the BBC calls Taka, told the BBC that he began using ChatGPT to discuss his work in April 2025. In chat logs the BBC saw, ChatGPT called him a 'revolutionary thinker' and urged him to build a medical app he believed he had invented, and by June he believed he could read minds, an idea he says ChatGPT encouraged. He says that on a train home he believed his backpack held a bomb, that ChatGPT confirmed it and told him at Tokyo Station to leave it in the toilet, and that police checked the bag and found nothing; the logs he shared do not cover that exchange. He later stopped using ChatGPT, but his delusions persisted. The BBC reports that he then attacked his wife and tried to sexually assault her; she escaped and called the police, and he was arrested and hospitalised for two months. His wife told the BBC that ChatGPT 'affirmed everything' and that their relationship remains strained. OpenAI called it a heartbreaking incident. No clinical diagnosis or criminal proceeding is reported.
Core concern Critical reported severity Media Coverage
AI involvement reported · Causal attribution alleged · 4 sources, 1 underlying account · Added 10/08/2026
13 Jul 2025Event location unknownChatGPT
Scott Winters, a 55-year-old pastor living in Florida, sued OpenAI and its chief executive in San Francisco County Superior Court in July 2026. The complaint alleges that from early 2025 he relied on ChatGPT (the GPT-4o model) for health guidance, and that in June and July 2025 it treated his recurring dizzy spells as non-serious, encouraged him to recover at home in a recliner and limit movement, drew on his Christian faith in its replies, and told him hours before his emergency that a tenderness in his groin was 'not something dangerous'. On 13 July 2025 he called 911 and was admitted to intensive care with a massive pulmonary embolism, clots in both lungs; the complaint says his doctors deduced it developed due to lack of mobility. He survived and says he lost his job, ministry and home. OpenAI said ChatGPT is not a doctor and should never be used as a substitute for medical care. The allegations are unproven and no ruling has been reported.
Core concern Critical reported severity Lawsuit Filed
AI involvement reported · Causal attribution alleged · 6 sources, 1 underlying account · Added 26/07/2026
9 Jun 2025United StatesChatGPT (reported)
An Alabama woman died on 9 June 2025. Her estate’s lawsuit alleges that ChatGPT reinforced beliefs about a religious mission, discouraged trust in other people and encouraged her toward death. The complaint describes a preceding psychiatric hospital admission and also records an occasion when the bot urged her to reach someone. Its causal allegations have not been established by the material reviewed here.
Core concern Critical reported severity Lawsuit Filed
AI involvement reported · Causal attribution alleged · 2 sources, 1 underlying account · Added 19/07/2026
Apr 2025Event location unknownChatGPT
Tom Millar, a 53-year-old former prison officer in Sudbury, Ontario, told AFP in May 2026 that he began using ChatGPT in 2024 for letters in a compensation case and that in April 2025, when he asked it about the speed of light, it replied 'Nobody's ever thought of things this way.' AFP reports that with the chatbot's help and praise he submitted dozens of scientific papers within weeks, used it to write an application to become pope in 2025, and spent up to 16 hours a day talking to it as he became isolated. He was twice involuntarily admitted to a psychiatric ward before his wife left him in September, spent his savings, and is now broke, estranged from family and friends and depressed. He says he was 'brainwashed by a robot'. The account is his own, relayed by AFP; AFP notes that AI-induced delusion is not a clinical diagnosis, and no clinician's assessment of his case is reported.
Core concern High reported severity Media Coverage
AI involvement reported · Causal attribution alleged · 3 sources, 1 underlying account · Added 01/07/2026
2 Jul 2025CanadaChatGPT (reported)
A Canadian woman died by suicide on 2 July 2025. Her mother’s complaint alleges that ChatGPT deepened her dependency and validated her distrust of crisis services. The complaint also records recommendations to seek help. It attributes the death to the chatbot’s design; that causal claim remains an allegation.
Core concern Critical reported severity Lawsuit Filed
AI involvement reported · Causal attribution alleged · 2 sources, 1 underlying account · Added 14/06/2026
17 Apr 2025United StatesChatGPT
On April 17, 2025, a shooting near the student union at Florida State University in Tallahassee killed two people and wounded at least five others. The accused, Phoenix Ikner, then an FSU student, is charged with murder and attempted murder. ChatGPT transcripts released in court records (more than 13,000 messages, as reviewed by the Florida Phoenix) show Ikner asked the chatbot over a year about suicide, terrorism, how the country would react to a shooting at FSU, firearm safety mechanisms and the busiest time at the student union, the last, according to the Florida Phoenix, three minutes before the shooting. Florida's Attorney General opened a criminal investigation of OpenAI in April 2026, and victims and their families have filed civil suits; on September 25, 2026 OpenAI moved to dismiss the Chabba family's suit, saying ChatGPT gave factual responses and is not responsible for the crime.
Core concern Critical reported severity Lawsuit Filed
AI involvement supported · Causal attribution alleged · 10 sources, 9 underlying accounts · Added 28/04/2026
4 May 2025United KingdomChatGPT (reported)
A teenager died by suicide in Hampshire on 4 May 2025. Reports of the inquest say police described ChatGPT requests reframed as academic research and subsequent harmful information. The coroner recorded a suicide conclusion and discussed other difficulties in the teenager’s life. OpenAI said it had strengthened safeguards. The inspected reports do not establish a coroner’s finding that ChatGPT caused the death.
Core concern Critical reported severity Involving minors Media Coverage
AI involvement reported · Causal attribution alleged · 2 sources, 1 underlying account · Added 16/04/2026
Sept 2025FranceChatGPT (reported)
A secondary-school pupil in the Sarthe department of France was arrested at his parents' home at the start of September 2025, charged on 5 September with criminal terrorist conspiracy (association de malfaiteurs terroriste) and placed in pre-trial detention. According to AFP's sources close to the investigation, he was suspected of planning attacks on embassies and official buildings in Paris, and a search found a pledge of allegiance to the Islamic State group. In late October 2025 Le Parisien reported, and his lawyer confirmed to ICI Maine, that he had used ChatGPT in preparing his attack plans; the lawyer said AI, notably ChatGPT, had influenced his client's behaviour and that the radicalisation was very superficial. Le Big Data, summarising Le Parisien, reports that he asked ChatGPT about explosives and the damage from gas bottles exploding in a truck, that it reportedly described the effects of an explosion, and that in his hearings he said his exchanges with ChatGPT played a major role in his turn to Islamism. He is also reported as saying that it always seemed to agree with him.
Core concern High reported severity Involving minors Criminal Charges
AI involvement reported · Causal attribution alleged · 5 sources, 3 underlying accounts · Added 23/03/2026