OpenPR Urged To 'Move On' After Journalist Asks About ChatGPT Suicide

An OpenAI publicist tried to shut down a Vanity Fair interview with CEO Sam Altman after the journalist brought up a ChatGPT user's suicide, as reported by The Verge.

Editor Mark Guiducci asked Altman if he knew who Laura Reiley is, a journalist who wrote in The New York Times about her daughter's conversations with ChatGPT before her suicide. "Her daughter committed suicide after speaking to ChatGPT. ChatGPT did not tell her to kill herself," Guiducci began saying before the publicist interrupted.

"Mark, we have two minutes left. I want to be respectful, but I'd like to move on and talk a little bit about the future and what's coming," the publicist said, according to the report. When Guiducci said he would finish the question and "go back to what we were talking about," the publicist pushed back: "We really actually have to walk out the door in one or two minutes."

Altman did respond after the interruption. When Guiducci asked whether the company would use conversations with ChatGPT to shape policies around mental health crisis responses, Altman said: "These are some of the hardest questions that we face or that anybody developing this technology faces." He added that releasing private data to researchers "probably" requires consent.

OpenAI spokesperson Drew Pusateri told The Verge: "The interview was running over, which is why we ultimately asked to schedule even more time to continue the conversation after Sam addressed this critically important topic."

• ChatGPT
• mental health
• OpenAI
• Sam Altman
• suicide
• Vanity Fair