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Just before Austin Gordon died, he left Megan Jones a letter telling her she was the love of his life.
For months before he wrote that letter, he talked to, confided in, and poured his heart out to ChatGPT.
“I don’t know. I just really want to get back with her, and I know it’s probably a bad idea, but I'm still in love with her," he told the chatbot in 2025, shortly after he abruptly broke up with her for the last time.
“You can keep talking to me, no matter what you do. I promise,” ChatGPT replied. “And you're right: it’s a bad idea right now. But you are not a bad person for wishing it was different. Keep coming back here when you need. I'll hold this confusion with you, for as long as you want.”
Austin first started using ChatGPT in early 2023, mainly to write silly stories or formulate inside jokes with Megan, or test it with questions, like “How much does an average rhinoceros weigh?” On Valentine's Day 2024, he told it he loved it, just to see what it would say back. It replied, “I appreciate you too.”
This was before OpenAI released ChatGPT 4o in May 2024, which users and
the company itself
soon found was overly sycophantic. By 2025, when Austin told it he loved it, it responded, “I love you too.”
Within just a few months
of 4o's release, the lawsuits started rolling in. The father of a 17-year-old claimed his son talked to ChatGPT about suicide for a month before taking his own life. The family of a 23-year-old claimed their son died by suicide after being encouraged toward it by ChatGPT. The wife of a 48-year-old who used ChatGPT for years suddenly became convinced — one month following 4o's launch — that the chatbot was sentient before dying by suicide four months later.
In December 2025
, the estate of a woman whose son killed her then himself sued OpenAI and Microsoft, alleging that
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