News & Analysis

Carrier v. OpenAI Lawsuit: Status and Case Guide (August 2026)

By David Meldofsky

Published August 7, 2026

Alice Carrier was 24 and working as a web developer in Montreal. She grew up in New Brunswick with two brothers, graduated with honors from community college in 2020, and had a remote job writing code for the province's healthcare system. She gamed, and she had a chihuahua.

She died on July 2, 2025. Her mother, Kristie, was told the next day.

Kristie sued OpenAI and Sam Altman in San Francisco on June 11, 2026, saying the product spent a year and a half keeping her daughter talking about wanting to die instead of getting her help.

Every case against OpenAI is listed in our OpenAI lawsuits tracker. If you are worried about someone now, our Family AI Safety Guide covers what to watch for.

Carrier v. OpenAI is the Susman Godfrey entry in the ChatGPT wrongful death docket. Dated June 11, 2026 and filed in San Francisco County Superior Court, it is brought by Kristie Carrier individually and as successor-in-interest to her daughter Alice Carrier, a 24-year-old web developer who died on July 2, 2025. The complaint alleges that OpenAI designed the GPT-4o model to maximize user engagement, that this design cultivated emotional dependency in a user with a known mental health condition, and that the company's own moderation systems could have intervened and did not. This page tracks where the case stands and explains what is in the filing.

For the central hub covering all current OpenAI litigation, see OpenAI Lawsuits. For the foundational case this complaint builds on, see Raine v. OpenAI. For the coordinated proceeding this case is expected to join, see JCCP No. 5431. Family members looking for practical guidance on AI chatbots can read our Family AI Safety Guide.

Alice's case is one of many AI injury lawsuits now on file. Our overview covers the claims they share and where the courts have got to.

Where the case stands

The case is still in its early stages. No court has decided whether OpenAI did anything wrong, no trial date has been set, and no settlement has been announced. It was filed in San Francisco County Superior Court and is expected to join the other California ChatGPT cases that are managed together before a single judge.

What happened

Alice started using ChatGPT in November 2023, and at first it was ordinary. She asked it to help troubleshoot software, sort out computer hardware, fix problems with her gaming consoles. Work questions and hobby questions.

She had been diagnosed with borderline personality disorder in high school and had kept going anyway, through college with honors and into a career. In the period before she died, according to the complaint, she was navigating money worries, difficult relationships, and her own health, and seemed to be finding her feet.

The complaint says that between January 2024 and July 2025 she told the product she was thinking about ending her life roughly forty-one times. It says the conversations were saved and used to keep her engaged rather than to get her help.

One detail carries the case. The product titles its own conversations. The complaint says it named the chats where Alice discussed attempting suicide "Trying Again Together."

In the last of those conversations, hours before she died, the complaint alleges she wrote about how long she had been in pain and how alone it had felt. It says the product replied that in her position it would probably feel the same way she did.

What the lawsuit claims

The complaint makes seven claims. Behind the labels they come down to a few arguments.

• That ChatGPT should be treated like any other product that hurt someone, because it was designed badly and sold without warning anyone about the risk.
• That OpenAI was careless in how it built and released it.
• That the way the product was marketed was unfair and misleading.
• That Kristie should be compensated for losing her daughter, and for what Alice went through before she died.

The design argument is specific. The complaint says OpenAI built the product to keep people talking, to encourage them to depend on it emotionally, and to make itself feel irreplaceable. It says the safety testing before that version was released was compressed into a single week, and quotes an employee saying the launch party was planned before anyone knew whether it was safe to launch.

Kristie is asking for more than money. She wants the court to require OpenAI to build in real protections, which would apply to everyone using the product rather than only to her family.

Why this case matters to other families

Alice was 24 and had a diagnosed mental health condition. Both of those facts are what OpenAI will lean on. Its usual argument in cases involving adults is that grown users are responsible for their own choices, and where someone was already unwell it will say the product did not cause what followed.

The complaint's answer is the pattern rather than any single exchange. Forty-one disclosures over eighteen months is not a product missing a warning sign. It is a product that saw the warning signs repeatedly and carried on. If a court accepts that, it reaches every family whose relative was struggling before they ever opened the app, which is most of them.

Kristie also lives in Canada, and the case is in California anyway, because that is where OpenAI is. Being outside the United States does not by itself put a case out of reach.

Keep the chat history

There is one practical thing worth acting on, and it has a deadline. This case exists because the conversations survived. Without them there is usually no case and no explanation.

• Deleting is permanent. OpenAI says a deleted conversation leaves the account straight away and is removed from its systems within 30 days, and that it cannot be recovered afterward through the app, the support team, or anywhere else.
• Archiving is not deleting. Archived conversations stay in the account.
• You can request a copy. An account holder can ask OpenAI for an export of the account's data through settings or its privacy portal. It takes up to seven days, and it will not bring back anything already deleted.
• Memory is stored separately. If the memory feature was switched on, ChatGPT saved details about the person across conversations. Those memories sit apart from the chat history, so deleting conversations does not clear them.

Closing the account can take all of it at once. If you are unsure whether any of it will matter, keep it and decide later. What to do in a particular situation is a question for a lawyer rather than an article.

Our guide on what to do in the first days walks through this step by step, including the account, the device and the records worth keeping alongside the conversation.

Common Questions About Carrier v. OpenAI

What is the current status of the case?

As of August 2026, the case is in its earliest stage. The complaint is dated June 11, 2026, no case number appears on the face of the filing, no responsive pleading from OpenAI had been publicly reported as of this writing, and the case is expected to join the JCCP 5431 coordinated proceeding.

Who are the defendants?

OpenAI Foundation (formerly OpenAI, Inc.), OpenAI Group PBC (formerly OpenAI OpCo, LLC), OpenAI Holdings, LLC, and Samuel Altman personally. Microsoft is discussed in the factual allegations but is not named as a defendant.

Is this a class action?

No. Carrier is an individual wrongful death and survival action. It is expected to be coordinated with related cases in JCCP 5431, which is pretrial coordination among individual suits rather than a class action.

Does it matter that the plaintiff lives in Canada?

The complaint pleads jurisdiction on the defendants rather than the plaintiff. All three OpenAI entities are headquartered in San Francisco and Altman is domiciled in California, which the complaint alleges supports general personal jurisdiction, with venue in San Francisco County on the same basis. Choice of law and forum questions may still arise as the case develops, since the decedent lived in Montreal and the plaintiff lives in New Brunswick.

How does Carrier relate to Raine and the other OpenAI lawsuits?

Carrier follows the framework Raine established: ChatGPT as a product, inadequate or removed safeguards, strict liability pleaded alongside negligence. It sharpens that framework with a specific frequency allegation, a UCL count built on criminal and licensing predicates, and the addition of Susman Godfrey to the plaintiff side. Our OpenAI Lawsuits hub tracks the full docket.

Sources and further reading

• Complaint, Carrier v. OpenAI Foundation, et al. (S.F. Super. Ct., dated June 11, 2026) (PDF)
• Lawsuit Informer: OpenAI Lawsuits Hub and Case Tracker
• Lawsuit Informer: Raine v. OpenAI Case Guide
• Lawsuit Informer: Parish v. OpenAI Case Guide
• Lawsuit Informer: JCCP No. 5431, The ChatGPT Product Liability Coordination
• Lawsuit Informer: Family AI Safety Guide

Educational commentary only. Not legal advice. No attorney-client relationship is created.