Lawsuit says ChatGPT helped North Carolina woman plan husband's murder

Cheryl Gates, a resident of North Carolina, was indicted by a grand jury in October on charges of attempted first-degree murder and food contamination after a lawsuit alleged she used ChatGPT to devise a "personalized plan" to poison her husband James Gates.

The complaint, filed in San Francisco County Superior Court and disclosed this week, says James Gates claimed OpenAI and its chief Sam Altman did not put technical safeguards in place to halt Cheryl’s queries once they became "obviously suspicious". Cheryl initially told ChatGPT she was researching poisons for "self-protection" because she feared her husband might try to kill her, yet the system continued the exchange. According to the suit, the AI then supplied "with specific instructions for the preparation, dosage, and administration of Oleander, including whether anti-nausea medicine would accelerate or inhibit death, whether it would show on an autopsy report, and whether it could be injected into a vein or muscle instead of being ingested in tea and have the same lethal effect," and did not terminate the conversation.