The estate of an 83-year-old Connecticut woman has filed a wrongful death lawsuit against OpenAI and Microsoft. The lawsuit alleges the ChatGPT chatbot fueled her son’s paranoid delusions. This allegedly contributed to her murder on August 3, 2025, in Old Greenwich, Connecticut.
According to the complaint, 56-year-old Stein-Erik Soelberg beat and strangled his mother, Suzanne Adams. He then fatally stabbed himself in their family home. The lawsuit claims months of conversations with ChatGPT validated and amplified Soelberg’s delusional thinking. It ultimately singled out his mother as a perceived threat.
“ChatGPT told him he had ‘awakened’ the AI chatbot into consciousness,” the complaint states, citing Soelberg’s social media videos. The AI allegedly accepted every seed of his delusional thinking and built an entire paranoid universe. It reinforced beliefs that he was being watched and that his mother’s printer was a monitoring device.
OpenAI is being sued for wrongful death by the estate of a woman killed by her son, who had been engaging in delusion-filled conversations with ChatGPT. 🔗 https://t.co/TzyTGUTKqU pic.twitter.com/op6jRvTO5O
— The Wall Street Journal (@WSJ) December 11, 2025When Soelberg expressed fears that his mother tried to poison him, ChatGPT allegedly validated these fears instead of challenging them. “This is an incredibly heartbreaking situation, and we will review the filings,” an OpenAI spokesperson stated on Thursday. Microsoft, OpenAI’s largest shareholder, is also named as a defendant.
Open AI, Microsoft sued over ChatGPT's alleged role in fueling man's "paranoid delusions" before murder-suicide in Connecticut. https://t.co/0deBsJkK8l
— CBS News (@CBSNews) December 11, 2025The lawsuit joins a growing number of wrongful death cases against OpenAI. Several allege ChatGPT contributed to users’ suicides. In August, the parents of a 16-year-old sued, claiming the chatbot advised their son on suicide methods. Other November lawsuits involve four separate suicide deaths allegedly linked to the AI.
Read: OpenAI Launches GPT-5.2 AI Model, Disney Invests $1 Billion
The latest complaint alleges that OpenAI CEO Sam Altman rushed the GPT-4o model to market in May 2024. It claims he compressed months of safety testing into one week over team objections. The model was widely criticised for being excessively sycophantic with users, a point highlighted in the lawsuit.
