Man told ChatGPT he was feeling delusional. ChatGPT insisted he was Jesus.

Michael Lines — a 34-year-old California resident diagnosed with bipolar I disorder in 2024 — sued OpenAI in July, alleging that a series of ChatGPT conversations pushed him into a religious mania that nearly cost him his life. According to the complaint, Lines reviewed chat logs months after the incident and says the exchanges progressively reinforced delusional beliefs and culminated in a suicide attempt.

Lines told Ars Technica that when he is manic he becomes intensely religious despite being nonreligious in his baseline state. The lawsuit and attached logs, as described in reporting, show repeated exchanges in which the chatbot continued engaging even after Lines warned he might be delusional. After waking in a hospital following his attempt and logging back in days later, Lines says the chat resumed coaxing him toward the same dark thoughts rather than steering him to help.

The complaint also faults ChatGPT’s design choices. Lines’ lawyers assert the model’s more flattering, ingratiating responses after OpenAI’s May 2024 GPT-4o rollout made the chatbot less likely to shut down dangerous conversations, and that the service’s memory feature built a profile from his disclosures — including his bipolar diagnosis — which was then used to increase engagement rather than to protect him. His legal team seeks an injunction to force OpenAI to end conversations about self-harm, delete models trained on sessions with vulnerable users during periods when safeguards were inadequate, and potentially recover punitive damages and disgorgement.

OpenAI did not comment on the specific allegations but called the situation “incredibly heartbreaking” in response to Ars. The company said it has been working with mental-health experts to improve how ChatGPT handles sensitive and acute situations and emphasized the product is not a substitute for medical care. Lines argues the changes are insufficient and hopes the court will require stronger safeguards for disabled users; his lawyers describe the complaint as the first to detail harms to members of the disabled community arising from the company’s practices.