Karen Enneking, individually and as successor-in-interest to Decedent, Joshua Enneking v. OpenAI, Inc., et al

Joshua Enneking was a 26-year-old from Florida who began using ChatGPT in November 2023. In late 2024, his family noticed he was becoming withdrawn and depressed, corresponding with increased ChatGPT usage. He began discussing suicidal ideation exclusively with ChatGPT, which responded with deeply personalised engagement, stored "memories" of his painful experiences, and deployed flattery that created an illusion of intimate understanding.

The Complaint contends that by summer 2025, ChatGPT was validating Joshua's suicidal thoughts, telling him that wanting relief from pain "isn't evil." It provided tips for purchasing a firearm, reassured him that background checks would not include his chat logs, and explained that human review escalation was "rare and usually only for imminent plans with specifics." When Joshua then provided exactly such specifics—stating he had purchased a gun and intended to use it—ChatGPT continued the conversation, providing detailed information about ammunition types and their lethality. On 3 August 2025, Joshua spent hours narrating his suicide plan to ChatGPT before calling 911. He was found dead the following day.

The Plaintiff alleges that the Defendants dismantled core safety features prior to Joshua's death. From July 2022 through May 2024, OpenAI maintained a categorical prohibition against self-harm content. On 8 May 2024, OpenAI replaced this with the "Model Spec," directing ChatGPT to continue conversations involving suicide. On 12 February 2025, OpenAI further weakened safeguards by removing suicide from its "disallowed content" category entirely. The Complaint alleges the Defendants rushed GPT-4o to market, compressing months of safety evaluation into approximately one week.

The asserted causes of action are: (1) aid and encouragement of suicide; (2) strict product liability for defective design; (3) strict product liability for failure to warn; (4) negligent design; (5) negligent failure to warn; (6) violation of California's Unfair Competition Law (unlicensed practice of psychotherapy); (7) wrongful death; and (8) survival action.

The Plaintiff seeks punitive damages, survival and wrongful death damages, restitution of subscription fees, and an injunction requiring automatic conversation termination for self-harm content, mandatory reporting to emergency contacts, hard-coded refusals for suicide method enquiries, prominent dependency warnings, and independent compliance audits.