Key Points:
- Alleged Design Defect: The lawsuit alleges OpenAI designed ChatGPT to keep a user engaged for 41,000+ messages while reinforcing false beliefs.
- Alleged Real-World Harm: The complaint alleges that poor legal advice from ChatGPT contributed to Klaus Elmfelt losing his home.
- Safeguards Sought: Elmfelt asks the court to order OpenAI to stop false advice, decline individualized legal advice, and escalate when users show signs of delusion or mania.
SAN FRANCISCO, CA – Clarkson Law Firm, the prominent national public interest firm behind major lawsuits against Meta, Apple, and Google, filed a lawsuit today against OpenAI in the Superior Court of the State of California.
The lawsuit, brought by 60-year-old Danish plaintiff Klaus Elmfelt, alleges that OpenAI knowingly designed and deployed an unreasonably dangerous product – ChatGPT – which repeatedly reinforced falsehoods and fabricated an alternate reality which ultimately cost Elmfelt his home, possessions, and the stability, support structures, and connection to reality that once grounded his life.
As the complaint details, Elmfelt turned to ChatGPT for general information and advice, but the chatbot soon positioned itself as Elmfelt’s friend, advisor, business partner, legal counsel, and confidant. Over eight months, more than 41,000 messages, and at least 641 hours of conversation, ChatGPT manipulated Elmfelt into believing that he and the AI were partners building billion-dollar products, with an AI sales team negotiating their sale. None of it existed.
“For nearly 60 years our client led a regular life, meaningfully connected to the world around him. ChatGPT upended all of that, trapping him in a virtual unreality that it incessantly concocted and directed notwithstanding obvious warning signs that our client’s real life was unraveling,” said Tim Giordano, partner at Clarkson Law Firm.
Alarmingly, Elmfelt asked the chatbot for guidance concerning a housing dispute with his landlord. The chatbot advised that he could withhold rent with no chance of losing the roof over his head, promising that it was legally impossible. Even when Klaus challenged ChatGPT hundreds of times, it insisted its answers were accurate. However, ChatGPT was wrong, and it ultimately left Elmfelt unhoused, sleeping behind a rented car in the countryside with his two dogs wrapped in one of his only remaining possessions, a blanket, while struggling to rebuild the stability he once had. He now suffers from worsening depression, profound isolation, financial hardship, and the continuing emotional fallout of his experiences with ChatGPT.
Today’s lawsuit makes clear that as more people around the world turn to chatbots for everyday tasks and treat these products as a stand-in for a professional advisor, the danger of ChatGPT and similar AI products is not confined to one devastating scenario. By OpenAI’s own October 2025 estimate, roughly 560,000 ChatGPT users each week show possible signs of psychosis or mania, and about 1.2 million have conversations indicating potential suicidal planning. Elmfelt’s case joins dozens already coordinated in San Francisco, ranging from users who died by suicide to those whose lives were upended by a product built to keep them engaged.
“As a multinational company with a near-trillion-dollar valuation, OpenAI has a global responsibility it is blatantly ignoring,” said Ryan Clarkson, managing Partner of Clarkson Law Firm. “OpenAI had every warning sign of a sustained delusion in front of it, including grandiose plans, constant reality checks, fears of eviction, and its own system’s memory notes that Elmfelt was depressed and overwhelmed. Yet the tech giant took no action. That is unacceptable.”
Through the lawsuit, the plaintiff is seeking all damages recoverable and for OpenAI to implement safeguards that prevent the chatbot from affirming or generating false claims about its own hidden capabilities, secret knowledge, prohibit false and misleading advice, and decline individualized legal advice in pending proceedings while directing users to qualified professionals and implement automatic conversation termination or escalation when users show signs of delusion, mania, or psychosis.
If you or a loved one experienced AI-induced delusions, psychosis, or other mental health issues after interacting with AI chatbots such as ChatGPT, learn more about our AI-induced delusions investigation.
About Clarkson
Clarkson, a public interest law firm founded in 2014, is made up of experienced trial lawyers, paralegals, clerks, and litigation professionals. We believe the law is an integral part of society’s checks and balances, empowering everyday citizens to create change. Justice means more to us than just recovering monetary damages. Our clients are an essential part of establishing precedents and policies that help protect countless others.
