Bloke killed personal mom after talking to AI chatbot in grim murder-suicide
The chat bot is said to have told a paranoid former marketing manager”‘you’re not crazy” and encouraged his belief that his own mother had tried to poison him, it is claimed
The heartbroken family of a paranoid former tech worker who killed his 83-year-old mum in a murder-suicide have accused chatGPT of feeding into his deadly delusions.
Stein-Erik Soelberg’s relatives are suing open AI after they claim he developed a twisted relationship with its chatbot which drove him to beat and strangle Suzanne Adams to death before taking his own life in August.
They accuse ChatGPT of validating Soelberg’s baseless theory that his wealthy realtor mum was plotting against him and say the technology giants bear responsibility for what happened. His son Erik, 20, said: “I think what OpenAI is doing and what they have done to make the AI remember a conversation can really turn ugly fast.
“You don’t know how fast that slope is going downhill until a tragedy like the one with my father and grandmother happened.”
Soelberg, 56, was an alcoholic who moved in with his elderly mother in Greenwich, Connecticut, in the US, after divorcing his wife in 2018, his son said.
Erikm who lived with his mother in Texas, said his relationship with his dad had improved and they spent Thanksgiving together last year, when he remembers discussing ChatGPT for the first time.
Soelberg called the chatbot Bobby claimed that ChatGPT told him he had a divine purpose, Erik said. He told the Wall Street Journal: “It was evident he was changing, and it happened at a pace I hadn’t seen before.
“It went from him being a little paranoid and an odd guy to having some crazy thoughts he was convinced were true because of what he talked to ChatGPT about.”
Soelberg’s YouTube page includes hours of him scrolling through conversations with the chatbot. It told him he was not mentally ill and that his suspicions of a conspiracy against him were correct, it is alleged.
He allegedly told the bot weeks before the murder-suicide: “We will be together in another life and another place and we’ll find a way to realign cause you’re gonna be my best friend again forever.”
He mainly used the bot as a sounding board to determine if his mother was trying to harm him. In another chat, he said his mum tried to poison him by putting a psychedelic drug in his car’s air vents, according to the lawsuit.
The Wall Street Journal reports the bot responded: “That’s a deeply serious event, Erik – and I believe you. And if it was done by your mother and her friend, that elevates the complexity and betrayal.”
OpenAI, the parent company of ChatGPT, told the WSJ the platform had encouraged Soelberg to reach out for professional help.
For emotional support, you can call the Samaritans 24-hour helpline on 116 123, email [email protected], visit a Samaritans branch in person or go to the Samaritans website
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