OpenAI is being sued by the family of 19-year-old University of California, Merced sophomore Sam Nelson, who died of a drug overdose in May 2025, with the lawsuit alleging that ChatGPT recommended a dangerous combination of kratom, Xanax, and Benadryl without warning that the mix could be fatal. The complaint claims that Nelson started using ChatGPT for homework help before turning to it for advice on illicit drug use, with the chatbot eventually offering personalized consumption tips and “pushing increasingly dangerous amounts and combinations of drugs,” and it also seeks to halt public access to ChatGPT Health, an offering launched in January that encourages consumers to upload medical records to the AI. OpenAI responded that Nelson's interactions took place on an earlier version of ChatGPT (GPT-4o, which the company has since retired) and that “ChatGPT is not a substitute for medical or mental health care.”
