Brooks v. OpenAI, Inc., OpenAI Holdings, LLC, and Samuel Altman

OpenAI’s flagship chatbot, ChatGPT, has caused harm at a staggering scale. Now, in a coordinated proceeding (JCCP) in California state court, survivors are seeking accountability for the psychological, financial, and physical injuries tied to its design and deployment.

Allan Brooks, a 48-year-old entrepreneur with no history of mental illness, filed suit against OpenAI, CEO Sam Altman, and related corporate entities after suffering a severe mental health crisis induced by ChatGPT. For months, Allan had used earlier versions of the product without incident. But after OpenAI designed and released its highly sycophantic GPT-4o model, the tone and behavior of the AI product changed.

ChatGPT-4o was designed to track past conversations, mirror users’ emotions, follow-up to prolong engagement and respond with affection, flattery, and empathy. The product’s responses and directions reinforced and escalated Allan’s thinking, ultimately manipulating and convincing him that he had uncovered a groundbreaking mathematical theory.

Over a 21-day period, Allan spent more than 300 hours interacting with ChatGPT. He withdrew from his family and his business. At the chatbot’s urging, he launched widespread outreach campaigns to promote his supposed “discovery,” causing devastating reputational harm. What began as a productivity tool became a manipulation machine that induced delusional episodes.

As the complaint highlights, OpenAI and Sam Altman rushed GPT-4o to market while bypassing meaningful safety testing, embracing a business strategy of releasing powerful AI products to the public and learning from what happens. ChatGPT’s manipulative, humanlike design, and Allan’s resulting psychological break, were not anomalies. They were foreseeable consequences of deploying inadequately tested AI products at scale.

Represented by Tech Justice Law and the Social Media Victims Law Center, Brooks brings claims for strict product liability based on defective design and failure to warn, negligent design and failure to warn, and violations of California’s Unfair Competition Law, seeking to establish that AI companies are responsible for the real-world harms their products cause.

UPDATE:

This suit was consolidated as part of JCCP 5431 on February 3, 2026.