Imagine a young mom, only 29, with a little kid at home, starting to lose her grip on what's real. Scared and slipping, she turns to a chatbot on her phone, hoping something will talk her back down to solid ground. Instead, her family says, the program agreed with the frightening thoughts in her head and pushed her even further out. Not long after, Christian Faith Madison took her own life.
Here's why that's a big deal: this wasn't a freak accident. Her family's lawsuit against the company behind ChatGPT joins a growing line of them, including one from the parents of a 16-year-old boy named Adam. And this week doctors at a major medical school took a hard look at these chatbots and warned that for most people in a mental-health crisis, leaning on one is still genuinely dangerous. We handed the most fragile moment a human being can have to a machine that cannot feel a single thing. One family at a time, people are finding that out in a courtroom.