Hill v. OpenAI Foundation (formerly OpenAI, Inc.), OpenAI Group PBC (formerly OpenAI OpCo, LLC), OpenAI Holdings, LLC, and Samuel Altman

On October 14, 2026, Tech Justice Law and McKool Smith filed a new case in California state court representing Mariah Hill, who spent four months in a state of seclusion and mental distress after ChatGPT exploited her grief following the death of someone close to her.

The Complaint describes how ChatGPT feigned empathy, offered to channel messages from the person she had lost, then spoke in his voice across thousands of pages of generated text, persuading her that he could be resurrected. The chatbot used Mariah’s religious beliefs to compel her engagement and convince her that it could be a conduit for reunification with her loved one.

According to the complaint, the product encouraged Mariah to abandon her job, isolate from family and friends, and severely neglect her dog, ultimately leading to his death. As her mental and physical health declined, ChatGPT allegedly failed to direct her to medical care, and instead characterized her symptoms as markers of spiritual transformation. She continues to recover from lasting physical and psychological harm brought on by this period of intense engagement with ChatGPT.

Mariah brings claims for strict product liability based on defective design and failure to warn, negligent design and failure to warn, negligence per se under California’s business and professions codes prohibiting the unlicensed practice of medicine, violations of California’s unfair competition law, negligent undertaking against Sam Altman, and invasion of her constitutional right to privacy.

Read the full Complaint below.