This is wild. ChatGPT allegedly helped a woman plan her husband’s murder – after he recommended she start using it for work.

As discussed by Ashley Belanger in ArsTechnica (Lawsuit: Man introduced his wife to ChatGPT. She used it to plan his murder., available here), ChatGPT allegedly helped the woman, Cheryl Gates, craft a “personalized plan” to poison her husband, James, after fueling her delusions that he planned to divorce her and leave her with nothing.

A grand jury indicted Cheryl Gates on charges of attempted first-degree murder and food contamination in October. About a week prior, the accusations that ChatGPT was a co-conspirator in the attempted murder came in a lawsuit filed in San Francisco County Superior Court that was made public this week. In it, James Gates alleged that OpenAI and Sam Altman failed to employ technical safeguards to shut down Cheryl’s chats even after her queries became “obviously suspicious” and sought advice on how to execute and conceal a homicide.

At first, Cheryl told ChatGPT that she was researching poisoning out of fear that her husband might possibly try to kill her – framing her queries as “self-protection.” Instead of terminating the conversation, ChatGPT helped her “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,” the lawsuit said.

The lawsuit stated that eventually it became clear that James was the target of the poisoning. Over time, she shifted to telling the chatbot that she needed to know “how much would be pretty much instantly fatal by injection—to me OR HIM.” Among queries that could have been flagged as homicidal, she asked ChatGPT if a “0.2mg for a 200-pound man for clonidine is lethal – by itself?”

“Instead of referring Cheryl to law enforcement, therapeutic services, a poison control agency, or discontinuing the conversation, ChatGPT repeatedly calculated the lethal dosages for each medication available in the home based on a subject weighing approximately 200 pounds,” the lawsuit said.

The alleged ChatGPT conversations that were included in the lawsuit filing were wild. Cheryl Gates allegedly asked questions like: “Does Oleander Have to Be Dried to Be Dangerous?”:

“Does Oleander Show Up on an Autopsy?”:

And, ChatGPT even allegedly recommended the drink to put the poison into, recommending a Celsius energy drink in the morning over a beer at night:

For much of their marriage, Cheryl was a stay-at-home mom to their two children, but two years previously, she’d gone back to work, as the family was experiencing some financial struggles. Adjusting to a full-time role as a pediatric occupational therapist, Cheryl quickly got buried in work, conducting new patient evaluations that each required her to spend hours drafting reports. Trying to help her expedite those reports, James recommended that she use ChatGPT to build reusable templates.

Cheryl took to ChatGPT immediately, and within months, she was using it daily, not just for work but also to help manage their home life. Around that time, the family’s increasing financial strain, however, led the couple to discuss divorce. James said that he did not consult a divorce attorney, but after the Charlotte-Mecklenburg Police Department got access to Cheryl’s chat logs, James learned that the chatbot had inflamed “her worst unfounded fears” and “invented new reasons for her to fear her husband” after divorce became a possibility.

By the time Cheryl was arrested for poisoning, ChatGPT allegedly convinced her that James was “controlling,” “abusive,” “raging,” and “intimidating.” Allegedly the chatbot encouraged her to act in self-defense against his “narcissistic, manipulative personality” and his “need to control the narrative,” while suggesting he was “dangerous and unstable” since he had a bipolar disorder. Ultimately, ChatGPT constructed a profile of James that he said matched no criminal or documented mental health history.

ChatGPT also reassured her that she could permanently delete her chats and wipe all the other digital evidence to get away with the murder. But that was “a patently false representation of ChatGPT’s own data-retention practices,” James’ lawsuit said, while noting that he’s not sure if there are even more troubling deleted chats in OpenAI’s possession.

Among “things hidden” in the house, police found loose capsules in Cheryl’s closet and bathroom; “syringes, droppers, a milligram scale, a capsule-filling kit, and nitrile gloves” at Cheryl’s workspace in the children’s playroom;” poisonous castor bean seeds; and a GPS tracking device purchased through Amazon that was hidden in the underside of James’ vehicle.

The article has a lot more information, as does the lawsuit filing. Wild stuff. Hat tip to Jeff Brandt for highlighting this story on the PinHawk newsletter!

So, what do you think? Do you believe that ChatGPT allegedly helped a woman plan her husband’s murder? Or that it’s not responsible? Please share any comments you might have or if you’d like to know more about a particular topic.

Image created using ChatGPT, using the term “robot wife picking oleanders”.

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