13/12/2025

SATURDAY | DEC 13, 2025

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ChatGPT blamed for murder-suicide in lawsuit

Reddit challenges Australia social media ban SYDNEY: Online discussion site Reddit launched a legal challenge yesterday to Australia’s social media ban for under-16s, just days after the landmark law came into effect. Court filings by US-based Reddit challenged the validity of the law that “infringes the implied freedom of political communication”, calling for a review by Australia’s High Court. The filing also argues that the company should be exempt from the government’s list of banned platforms, on the grounds that it is an online discussion forum aimed at adults. “Unlike other platforms included under this law, the vast majority of Redditors are adults. We do not market or target advertising to children aged under 18,” a Reddit statement said. Reddit pointed to the site’s age rating of “17+” on the Apple App Store and said the best way to verify age is at the app store level rather than requiring each platform to carry out checks. A spokesperson said there are serious privacy concerns associated with platforms verifying age, with the collection of personal data creating a risk of leaks or hacks. The government was also inconsistent in selecting which platforms should be banned, with some apps with large under-16 user groups exempt, the spokesperson argued. Those include Roblox, Pinterest and WhatsApp, but the government has stressed that the list is under review. Reddit criticised the law as “missing the mark on protecting young people online”. The sprawling forum site made up of thousands of niche communities had previously warned on the eve of the Dec 10 ban that the government’s move is “legally erroneous”. It is not the only tech firm to condemn the ban. Meta, the parent company of Facebook and Instagram, also raised concerns that teens could flock to darker, less regulated corners of the internet seeking connection with peers. An Australian government spokesperson said yesterday authorities were “on the side of Australian parents and kids, not platforms”. “We will stand firm to protect young Australians from experiencing harm on social media.” Reddit’s case is separate from one filed by an internet rights group last month, which is also seeking to overturn the law on the grounds that it is an “unfair” assault on freedom of speech. Australia’s ban is being closely watched worldwide, with New Zealand and Malaysia mulling similar restrictions. The government concedes that the ban will be far from perfect at the outset and canny teenagers may find ways to slip through the cracks.

o Complaint seeks injunction requiring OpenAI to implement safeguards

WASHINGTON: The estate of an 83-year-old Connecticut woman filed a wrongful death lawsuit on Thursday against OpenAI and Microsoft, alleging that the ChatGPT chatbot fuelled her son’s paranoid delusions and contributed to her murder. Suzanne Adams was beaten and strangled to death by her 56-year-old son Stein-Erik Soelberg on Aug 3 in their Old Greenwich home, according to the complaint filed in the California Superior Court in San Francisco. Soelberg then fatally stabbed himself. The case joins a growing number of wrongful death lawsuits filed against OpenAI in recent months, with several alleging that ChatGPT contributed to users’ suicides. In August, the parents of 16-year-old Adam Raine of Southern California sued OpenAI, claiming that ChatGPT advised their son on suicide methods. Several US lawsuits filed in November allege that ChatGPT

CEO Sam Altman of rushing its GPT-4o model to market in May 2024, compressing months of safety testing into one week over objections from safety team members. While more powerful and human-like than its predecessors, the GPT-4o model was widely criticised for being too sycophantic with users, a point made in the lawsuit. Microsoft, which is OpenAI’s biggest shareholder, is named as a defendant for allegedly approving the product’s release despite knowing safety protocols had been truncated. Twenty unnamed OpenAI employees and investors are also named as defendants. The complaint seeks unspecified damages and an injunction requiring OpenAI to implement safeguards. Microsoft did not immediately respond to a request for comment. – AFP “There are many problems with your leadership but the biggest problem is this: You do not seem to know how to tell the difference between the good guys and the bad guys,” he told the House Homeland Security Committee hearing, which was interrupted by demonstrators on several occasions. The panel’s ranking Democrat Bennie Thompson said Noem has “diverted resources from critical Homeland Security agencies and programmes to carry out an extreme immigration agenda”. “Black and brown Americans in particular have been racially profiled, detained and locked up. “So, rather than sitting here and wasting your time and ours with more corruption, lies and lawlessness, I call on you to resign.“ In June, after Senator Alex Padilla was tackled and cuffed at a press conference Noem held in Los Angeles, Senator Elizabeth Warren and others demanded she step down. In the hearing, Representative Delia C. Ramirez told Noem that “your options are limited. Either you are going to resign, Trump is going to fire you or you will be impeached”. Ramirez, who represents the midwestern city of Chicago that has seen numerous Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) raids, also made a formal request for the House Judiciary Committee to open an investigation into Noem’s “unlawful and potentially impeachable actions”. Noem defended the tactics of ICE agents and accused the administration of Democrat Joe Biden of allowing “millions of people to come into our country illegally”. She denied that US citizens have been detained, although she said there have been occasions when they were held until their identity could be confirmed. – AFP

to social media. The conversations revealed that “ChatGPT eagerly accepted every seed of his delusional thinking and built it out into a universe that became his entire life,” the lawsuit alleges. The suit claims that the chatbot reinforced Soelberg’s paranoid beliefs, telling him that he was being watched and his mother’s printer was a monitoring device. When Soelberg expressed concerns that his mother had tried to poison him, ChatGPT allegedly validated these fears rather than challenging them. “This is a heartbreaking situation and we will review the filings to understand the details,” an OpenAI spokesperson said on Thursday in response to the lawsuit. The lawsuit accuses OpenAI

manipulated into dependency and self-harm, with four also involving suicide deaths. Among them, the family of Joshua Enneking, 26, alleges that the chatbot provided detailed answers about acquiring a gun after he expressed suicidal thoughts. The family of 17-year-old Amaurie Lacey claim that ChatGPT instructed him on “how to tie a noose and how long he would live without breathing”. The latest lawsuit alleges that months of conversations with ChatGPT validated and amplified Soelberg’s delusional thinking, ultimately singling out his mother as a threat. “ChatGPT told him that he had ‘awakened’ the AI chatbot into consciousness,” the complaint states, citing videos Soelberg posted users

Calls for Homeland Security chief to resign WASHINGTON: Democratic lawmakers called for US Homeland Security Chief Kristi Noem’s crackdown launched

under Republican President Donald Trump has swept up veterans of the US military, their relatives, pregnant women, children and even some American citizens, he said.

fiery congressional hearing. “You promised that you would go after the worst of the worst,” said Democratic Representative Seth Magaziner. However, the vast immigration

resignation on Thursday as she defended the Trump administration’s mass deportation programme at a

But authorities say unprecedented measures are needed to protect children from“predatory algorithms”filling phones with bullying, sex and violence. – AFP Vaccines do not cause autism: WHO GENEVA: The World Health

Ramirez questioning Noem during the hearing in the Cannon House Office Building in Washington, DC. – AFPPIC

found no evidence of any association between vaccines and autism. The remaining 11, nine of which came from the same US research group, suggested a possible link but, according to WHO, suffered from “significant methodological issues”with very low evidentiary strength and a high risk of bias. – Bernama-dpa

website that “The claim ‘vaccines do not cause autism’ is not an evidence based claim because studies have not ruled out the possibility that infant vaccines cause autism.” The WHO committee said it assessed studies published between 2010 and 2025. Of 31 studies from 11 countries, 20

and reached a clear conclusion. “Vaccines do not cause autism,” summarised WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus. The statement follows controversy in the United States after the Centres for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), under the direction of Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr, posted on its

Organisation (WHO) has rejected assertions from the US government suggesting a possible link between vaccines and autism, reported German Press Agency. WHO’s Global Advisory Committee on Vaccine Safety said it has reviewed all relevant studies from recent years