Post by @404.media

WARNING: Details of self-harm and suicide. If you or someone you know is struggling, The Crisis Text Line is a texting service for emotional crisis support. To text with a trained helper, text SAVE to 741741. Austin first started using ChatGPT in early 2023, mainly to write silly stories or formulate inside jokes with Megan, or test it with questions, like “How much does an average rhinoceros weigh?” Within just a few months of 4o's release, the lawsuits started rolling in. The father of a 17-year-old claimed his son talked to ChatGPT about suicide for a month before taking his own life. The family of a 23-year-old claimed their son died by suicide after being encouraged toward it by ChatGPT. The wife of a 48-year-old who used ChatGPT for years suddenly became convinced — one month following 4o's launch — that the chatbot was sentient before dying by suicide four months later. In December 2025, the estate of a woman whose son killed her then himself sued OpenAI and Microsoft, alleging that their chatbots goaded him into it. Dozens of families and victims have accused AI companies of developing products that encouraged users to harm themselves or others in recent years. An untold number of people experience what's colloquially come to be called "AI psychosis," with their friends and families grieving who they were or would have been, in the blast radius of big tech companies’ sycophantic conversational chatbots. We know so much about how Austin's relationship with ChatGPT progressed because it's laid out in court documents. In January, Austin's mother Stephanie Gray filed a lawsuit against OpenAI, accusing the company of creating a product imbued with “excessive sycophancy, anthropomorphic features, and memory that stored and referenced user information across conversations in order to create deeper intimacy.” Across 59 pages, that lawsuit documents years of Austin's conversations with ChatGPT By November 2025, Austin was dead at 40 years old, leaving behind family and friends who loved him, who are still heartbroken and confused. Now, his former partner Megan Jons wants everyone to know what happened. Link in bio to read the full story.