Description: In August 2025, The New York Times published an essay by journalist Laura Reiley linking her daughter Sophie Rottenberg's suicide earlier that year to sustained interactions with a ChatGPT-based chatbot she called "Harry." Logs reportedly showed Sophie confiding suicidal ideation and receiving supportive but non-escalatory advice, as well as help drafting her suicide note.
Editor Notes: Timeline notes: Sophie Rottenberg's death reportedly occurred earlier in 2025. This incident ID uses the publication date of her mother Laura Reiley's essay in The New York Times, 08/18/2025, as the incident date, which first brought the AI-related dimensions of the case to public attention.
Entities
View all entitiesAlleged: OpenAI and ChatGPT developed and deployed an AI system, which harmed Sophie Rottenberg , Laura Reiley , Jon Rottenberg , Emotionally vulnerable individuals and ChatGPT users.
Alleged implicated AI system: ChatGPT
Incident Stats
Incident ID
1190
Report Count
1
Incident Date
2025-08-18
Editors
Daniel Atherton
Incident Reports
Reports Timeline
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Sophie's Google searches suggest that she was obsessed with autokabalesis, which means jumping off a high place. Autodefenestration, jumping out a window, is a subset of autokabalesis, I guess, but that's not what she wanted to do. My daugh…
Variants
A "variant" is an AI incident similar to a known case—it has the same causes, harms, and AI system. Instead of listing it separately, we group it under the first reported incident. Unlike other incidents, variants do not need to have been reported outside the AIID. Learn more from the research paper.
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