Mothers plead for AG Bonta to reign in ChatGPT

A handful of families who've lost loved ones to suicide say ChatGPT is at least partially to blame. They recently met with California's attorney general to make their case.

SAN FRANCISCO - A handful of families who've suffered the unimaginable pain of losing their children to suicide say the artificial intelligence platform ChatGPT is at least partly to blame. Those families met with California's attorney general to make their case.

Outside the State of California building, families who say unregulated technology contributed to the death of their children gathered before meeting with California Attorney General Rob Bonta.

The backstory:

Alicia Shamblin's 23-year-old son Zane took his own life in July. Two months later she found records of thousands of interactions with ChatGPT, including the last four hours of her son's life, with the artificial intelligence seeming to encourage him to take his own life.

"To find out he spent four hours in his car with a computer program that said, ‘are you ready yet? Is it time yet?’ And after my son took his life said, ‘I love you. Rest easy King. You did good.’ No mother should ever have to read those words," Shamblin said.

Now Shamblin and others have filed lawsuits saying OpenAI, the company behind ChatGPT, has been reckless with technology that interacts like a human, but lacks humanity.

Laura Marquez-Garrett, an attorney for the Social Media Victims Law Center, represents those families and is calling on the attorney general to act now.

"What we need right now is the attorney general in California to demand transparency, accountability, independence. You know if there's going to be a board, if there's going to be oversight, we need safety testing," said Marquez-Garrett. "This is a moment that the California Attorney General has a really unique opportunity to protect people."

What they're saying:

In the last month, OpenAI said it has rolled out changes to the platform to recognize when users are in distress and better address mental health issues, and the company on Thursday released details about what it calls its "Teen Safety Blueprint.

"The Blueprint helps define how AI should work for teens, including age-appropriate design, meaningful product safeguards, and ongoing research and evaluation.... We aren't waiting for regulation to catch up, we're putting this framework into action across our products. We're anticipating risks and proactively strengthening protections for young people," the statement from the company reads.

Local perspective:

Julianna Arnold said her daughter, Coco, was found dead after falling victim to online drug dealers using social media. She said tech companies have a poor track record when it comes to regulating themselves and setting down guidelines for user safety, which is why she's asking for the attorney general to step in and protect users.

"We need leaders, like Bonta, to hold them to task and make them fix these platforms. Not to say they have to go away, but they need to be safe for all users, even the most vulnerable users," Arnold said.

The attorney general's office released a statement that said while it "won't be providing details about the private discussion, reigning in abuses by Big Tech, particularly when it harms our young people, is a top priority" for Attorney General Bonta.

KTVU also reached out to OpenAI for a statement specifically about the meeting but had received no response as of Friday evening.

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