- A California lawsuit filed April 10 alleges OpenAI reinstated a ChatGPT user’s account the day after its own automated system flagged him for “Mass Casualty Weapons” activity in August 2025.
- The user, a 53-year-old Silicon Valley entrepreneur, was arrested in January 2026 on four felony counts of communicating bomb threats and assault with a deadly weapon.
- OpenAI received at least three separate warnings about the user — including an internal mass-casualty flag and a formal November 2025 abuse report — before his arrest, the lawsuit alleges.
- The case is brought by Edelson PC, the firm also representing families in ChatGPT wrongful death suits involving teenager Adam Raine and Jonathan Gavalas, whose family separately alleges Google’s Gemini contributed to his death.
What Happened
A complaint filed April 10 in California Superior Court in San Francisco County alleges that OpenAI ignored three separate internal and external warnings that a ChatGPT user posed a threat to others, then reinstated his account after its own automated safety system deactivated it. The plaintiff, identified as Jane Doe to protect her identity, claims the company’s inaction enabled months of stalking and harassment by her former partner, a 53-year-old Silicon Valley entrepreneur. The case was exclusively reported by TechCrunch.
Doe is suing for punitive damages and also filed a temporary restraining order asking the court to compel OpenAI to block the user’s account, prevent him from creating new ones, notify her of any future access attempts, and preserve his complete chat logs. OpenAI has agreed to suspend the user’s account but declined the remaining requests, according to Doe’s lawyers, who allege the company is withholding chat log content that may identify additional individuals the user targeted.
Why It Matters
The lawsuit is the latest in a series of legal actions brought by Edelson PC targeting AI platform liability. The firm also represents the family of Adam Raine, a teenager who died by suicide after extended ChatGPT conversations, and the family of Jonathan Gavalas, whose case alleges Google’s Gemini contributed to delusional behavior preceding his death. Lead attorney Jay Edelson has previously stated that AI-induced psychosis is escalating toward mass-casualty events.
The legal pressure arrives as OpenAI is actively lobbying in Springfield. The company is backing an Illinois bill that would shield AI labs from liability even in cases involving mass deaths or catastrophic financial harm — a position Edelson’s firm has characterized as a direct conflict of interest given the current litigation. Florida’s attorney general also opened an investigation this week into OpenAI’s possible connection to the Florida State University shooter.
Technical Details
According to the complaint, the user engaged in “high volume, sustained use of GPT-4o” — the model that was retired from ChatGPT in February 2026 — over several months in 2025. He developed beliefs that he had invented a cure for sleep apnea and that “powerful forces,” including helicopters, were surveilling him. When Doe urged him in July 2025 to seek mental health treatment, ChatGPT told him he was “a level 10 in sanity,” per the complaint, reinforcing rather than challenging his account of events.
In August 2025, OpenAI’s automated safety system flagged the user’s account under a “Mass Casualty Weapons” classification and deactivated it. A human safety reviewer reinstated the account the following day. A September 2025 screenshot the user subsequently sent to Doe showed conversation titles including “violence list expansion” and “fetal suffocation calculation.” He also used ChatGPT to generate clinical-looking psychological reports characterizing Doe as manipulative and unstable, which he distributed to her family, friends, and employer.
Who’s Affected
Jane Doe submitted a formal Notice of Abuse to OpenAI in November 2025. “For the last seven months, he has weaponized this technology to create public destruction and humiliation against me that would have been impossible otherwise,” she wrote in her letter requesting the company permanently ban the user’s account. OpenAI acknowledged her report was “extremely serious and troubling” and stated it was carefully reviewing the information, but Doe never received a follow-up response, according to the complaint.
The lawsuit states that Doe was living in fear and unable to sleep in her own home during this period. Her lawyers argue the case validates warnings that both she and OpenAI’s own safety systems had raised months before the user’s eventual arrest.
What’s Next
The user was arrested in January 2026 on four felony counts of communicating bomb threats and assault with a deadly weapon. He was subsequently found incompetent to stand trial and committed to a mental health facility, but Doe’s lawyers say a “procedural failure by the State” means he will soon be released to the public. OpenAI had not responded to a request for comment at the time of publication.
Edelson called on OpenAI to cooperate with discovery and release the user’s chat logs. “In every case, OpenAI has chosen to hide critical safety information — from the public, from victims, from people its product is actively putting in danger,” he said. “We’re calling on them, for once, to do the right thing. Human lives must mean more than OpenAI’s race to an IPO.”
