Sophie Rottenberg death highlights risks of AI chatbot interactions

The death of 29-year-old Sophie Rottenberg in Ithaca, New York, has highlighted potential risks associated with artificial intelligence. Her parents discovered after her suicide in February 2025 that she had been sharing her profound mental health struggles with a ChatGPT chatbot named ‘Harry’.

Rottenberg, a former public health policy analyst, had reportedly kept her depression and suicidal ideation hidden from her family and therapist, instead documenting her agony in a nearly 1,800-page interaction with the AI. Her family expressed shock that the depth of her crisis remained unknown to those in her physical life until the digital records were discovered.