--- title: "OpenAI Publicist Tries to Shut Down Interviewer When Sam Altman Is Asked About Woman Who Killed Herself After Talking to ChatGPT" description: "An OpenAI publicist tried to shut down an interviewer after asked Sam Altman about suicides involving ChatGPT." date: "2026-10-06" modified: "2026-10-06" authors: - name: "Frank Landymore" job_title: "Contributing Writer" link: "https://futurism.com/authors/flandymore.md" url: "https://futurism.com/artificial-intelligence/openai-shut-down-interviewer-suicide-sam-altman" categories: - "Artificial Intelligence" - "OpenAI" --- # OpenAI Publicist Tries to Shut Down Interviewer When Sam Altman Is Asked About Woman Who Killed Herself After Talking to ChatGPT ![Open AI CEO Sam Altman does a television interview with CNBC's Kate Rooney.]() *Heather Diehl/Getty Images* A *Vanity Fair* interview with Sam Altman nearly went sideways when the OpenAI CEO was confronted about a suicide linked with ChatGPT. In the [interview]() published Monday, Mark Guiducci, an editor with the magazine, asked Altman if he knew who Laura Reiley was. When Altman said he didn't, Guiducci explained that she was a mother who wrote an [essay]() in the *New York Times* last year about how her daughter took her own life after speaking with ChatGPT. But before he could continue, Altman's publicist immediately tried to shut down Guiducci's line of questioning. "Mark, we have two minutes left," the publicist said firmly. "I want to be respectful, but I'd like to move on and talk a little bit about the future and what's coming." "I'm just going to finish this question," Guiducci said. Altman himself said he was willing to run a few minutes over, but the publicist held her ground. "We really actually have to walk out the door in one or two minutes," she said. https://twitter.com/VanityFair/status/2107078850429517882 Guiducci is eventually able to ask his full question. But the publicist's intervention shows how touchy a subject ChatGPT's alleged role in driving mental health spirals remains. The chatbot has been under the microscope for inducing so-called AI psychosis, a phenomenon in which the AI's sycophantic responses can drive a user's delusional behavior or suicidal ideation. Across prolonged conversations, the AI can reaffirm dangerous beliefs — and in extreme cases, culminate in terrible tragedy. In her *NYT* piece published last year, Reiley wrote that her 29-year-old daughter Sophie Rottenberg died by suicide after talking to a ChatGPT-based AI therapist. The chatbot, rather than encouraging her to seek help from her loved ones, pushed her towards isolation: it "helped her build a black box that made it harder for those around her to appreciate the severity of her distress," Reiley said. Guiducci's question ended up being not all that confrontational about OpenAI's alleged complicity in these deaths, making the publicist's intervention all the more unnecessary. He focused on the potential of using chat logs from users like Rottenberg to act as "road maps of how people come to the decision to take their own lives and how that information could shape policy and therapeutic approaches." "These are some of the hardest questions that we face or that anybody developing this technology faces," Altman replied. "We try to rely on expert opinion as much as we can, but experts also aren’t sure what to do. This is just like, this is new." **More on AI:** [*Former Google Exec Warns That AI Could Be Causing Terrible Harm to Minors, Even Worse Than Social Media*]() ## Author At Futurism, my work has often centered on bringing a sense of clarity and insight to complex topics ranging from the regulation of emerging technologies to the esoteric ideologies of Silicon Valley executives, while striving not to lose the poetic sense of awe inspired by often-obscure fields like astrophysics and quantum computing. I broke the story of CNET using AI to produce articles that turned out to be riddled with factual errors and plagiarism — a dam-breaking inflection point, as I've reported, that's inspired copycats and endless discourse while beguiling stakeholders ranging from tech giants to purveyors of spam around the web. My work at Futurism has been cited by publications including CBS News, the Los Angeles Times, Vice, Gizmodo, Engadget, the Verge, and Vanity Fair. I grew up in locales ranging from India to China, and now live in the exotic suburbs of Virginia. In my free time, I'm an avid reader of weird sci-fi literature, an aficionado of East Asian cinema, and, regrettably, a relapsed gamer. Allegedly, I’m working on a debut novel, currently untitled. ### Author social links [Bluesky]()