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After months of conversations with ChatGPT,\u00a0 a 53-year-old Silicon Valley entrepreneur became convinced he\u2019d discovered a cure for sleep apnea and that powerful people were coming after him, according to a new lawsuit filed in California Superior Court in San Francisco County. He then allegedly used the tool to stalk and harass his ex-girlfriend.<\/p>\n
Now the ex-girlfriend is suing OpenAI, alleging the company\u2019s technology enabled the acceleration of her harassment, TechCrunch has exclusively learned. She claims OpenAI ignored three separate warnings that the user posed a threat to others, including an internal flag classifying his account activity as involving mass-casualty weapons.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The plaintiff, referred to as Jane Doe to protect her identity, is suing for punitive damages. She also filed a temporary restraining order Friday asking the court to force OpenAI to block the user\u2019s account, prevent him from creating new ones, notify her if he attempts to access ChatGPT, and preserve his complete chat logs for discovery.<\/p>\n
OpenAI has agreed to suspend the user\u2019s account but has refused the rest, according to Doe\u2019s lawyers. They say the company is withholding information about specific plans for harming Doe and other potential victims the user may have discussed with ChatGPT.<\/p>\n
The lawsuit lands amid growing concern over the real-world risks of sycophantic AI systems. GPT-4o, the model cited in this and many other cases, was retired from ChatGPT in February<\/a>.\u00a0<\/p>\n The case is brought by Edelson PC, the firm behind the wrongful death suits involving teenager Adam Raine<\/a>, who died by suicide after months of conversations with ChatGPT, and Jonathan Gavalas<\/a>, whose family alleges Google\u2019s Gemini fueled his delusions and potential mass-casualty event before his death. Lead attorney Jay Edelson has warned that AI-induced psychosis is escalating from individual harm toward mass-casualty events<\/a>.<\/p>\n That legal pressure is now colliding directly with OpenAI\u2019s legislative strategy: The company is backing an Illinois bill <\/a>that would shield AI labs from liability even in cases involving mass deaths or catastrophic financial harm.\u00a0<\/p>\n Techcrunch event<\/p>\n \n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tSan Francisco, CA<\/span> OpenAI did not respond in time to comment. TechCrunch will update the article if the company responds.<\/p>\n The Jane Doe lawsuit lays out in detail how that liability played out for one woman over several months.<\/p>\n Last year, the ChatGPT user in the lawsuit (whose name is not included in the lawsuit to protect his identity) became convinced that he had invented a cure for sleep apnea after months of \u201chigh volume, sustained use of GPT-4o.\u201d When no one took his work seriously, ChatGPT told him that \u201cpowerful forces\u201d were watching him, including using helicopters to surveil his activities, according to the complaint.\u00a0<\/p>\n In July 2025, Jane Doe urged him to stop using ChatGPT and to seek help from a mental health professional. He instead turned back to ChatGPT, which assured him he was \u201ca level 10 in sanity\u201d and helped him double down on his delusions, per the lawsuit.\u00a0<\/p>\n Doe had broken up with the user in 2024, and he used ChatGPT to process the split, according to emails and communications cited in the lawsuit. Rather than push back on his one-sided account, it repeatedly cast him as rational and wronged, and her as manipulative and unstable. He then took these AI-generated conclusions off the screen and into the real world, using them to stalk and harass her. This manifested in several AI-generated, clinical-looking psychological reports that he distributed to her family, friends, and employer.\u00a0<\/p>\n Meanwhile, the user continued to spiral. In August 2025, OpenAI\u2019s automated safety system flagged him for \u201cMass Casualty Weapons\u201d activity and deactivated his account. <\/p>\n A human safety team member reviewed the account the next day and restored it, even though his account may have contained evidence that he was targeting and stalking individuals, including Doe, in real life. For example, a September screenshot the user sent to Doe showed a list of conversation titles including \u201cviolence list expansion\u201d and \u201cfetal suffocation calculation.\u201d<\/p>\n The decision to reinstate is notable following two recent school shootings in Tumbler Ridge, Canada, and at Florida State University (FSU). OpenAI\u2019s safety team had flagged the Tumbler Ridge shooter as a potential threat, but higher-ups reportedly<\/a> decided not to alert authorities. Florida\u2019s attorney general this week opened an investigation<\/a> into OpenAI\u2019s possible link with the FSU shooter.<\/p>\n According to the Jane Doe lawsuit, when OpenAI restored her stalker\u2019s account, his Pro subscription wasn\u2019t reinstated alongside it. He emailed the trust and safety team to sort it out, copying Doe on the message.\u00a0<\/p>\n In his emails, he wrote things like: \u201cI NEED HELP VERY FAST, PLEASE. PLEASE CALL ME!\u201d and \u201cthis is a matter of life or death.\u201d He claimed he was \u201cin the process of writing 215 scientific papers,\u201d which he was writing so fast he didn\u2019t \u201ceven have time to read.\u201d Included in those emails was a list of tens of AI-generated \u201cscientific papers\u201d with titles like: \u201cDeconstructing Race as a Biological Category_ Legal, Scientific, and Horn of Africa Perspectives.pdf.txt.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cThe user\u2019s communications provided unmistakable notice that he was mentally unstable and that ChatGPT was the engine of his delusional thinking and escalating conduct,\u201d the lawsuit states. \u201cThe user\u2019s stream of urgent, disorganized, and grandiose claims, along with a concrete ChatGPT-generated report targeting Plaintiff by name and a sprawling body of purported \u2018scientific\u2019 materials, was unmistakable evidence of that reality. OpenAI did not intervene, restrict his access, or implement any safeguards. Instead, it enabled him to continue using the account and restored his full Pro access.\u201d<\/p>\n Doe, who claims in the lawsuit that she was living in fear and could not sleep in her own home, submitted a Notice of Abuse to OpenAI in November.<\/p>\n \u201cFor the last seven months, he has weaponized this technology to create public destruction and humiliation against me that would have been impossible otherwise,\u201d Doe wrote in her letter to OpenAI requesting the company permanently ban the user\u2019s account.<\/p>\n OpenAI responded, acknowledging the report was \u201cextremely serious and troubling\u201d and that it was carefully reviewing the information. Doe never heard back.<\/p>\n Over the next couple of months, the user continued to harass Doe, sending her a series of threatening voicemails. In January, he was arrested and charged with four felony counts of communicating bomb threats and assault with a deadly weapon. Doe\u2019s lawyers allege this validates warnings both she and OpenAI\u2019s own safety systems had raised months earlier, warnings the company allegedly chose to ignore.<\/p>\n The user was found incompetent to stand trial and committed to a mental health facility, but a \u201cprocedural failure by the State\u201d means he will soon be released to the public, according to Doe\u2019s lawyers.\u00a0<\/p>\n Edelson called on OpenAI to cooperate. \u201cIn every case, OpenAI has chosen to hide critical safety information \u2014 from the public, from victims, from people its product is actively putting in danger,\u201d he said. \u201cWe\u2019re calling on them, for once, to do the right thing. Human lives must mean more than OpenAI\u2019s race to an IPO.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
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