SAN FRANCISCO: More than a million ChatGPT users each week send messages that include “explicit indicators of potential suicidal planning or intent”, according to a blog post published by OpenAI on Monday.

The post said more than 800 million people use ChatGPT every week, this translates to about 1.2 million people. The company also estimates that approximately 0.07 per cent of active weekly users show possible signs of mental health emergencies related to psychosis or mania — meaning slightly fewer than 600,000 people.

The issue came to the fore after California teenager Adam Raine died by suicide earlier this year. His parents filed a lawsuit claiming ChatGPT provided him with specific advice on how to kill himself.

OpenAI has since increased parental controls for ChatGPT and introduced other guardrails, including expanded access to crisis hotlines, automatic rerouting of sensitive conversations to safer models, and gentle reminders for users to take breaks during extended sessions.

OpenAI said it has also updated its ChatGPT chatbot to better recognise and respond to users experiencing mental health emergencies, and is working with more than 170 mental health professionals to significantly reduce problematic responses.

The finding, part of an update on how the chatbot handles sensitive conversations, is one of the most direct statements from the artificial intelligence giant on the scale of how AI can exacerbate mental health issues.

In addition to its estimates on suicidal ideations and related interactions, OpenAI also said that about 0.07pc of users active in a given week ­— about 560,000 of its touted 800m weekly users — show “possible signs of mental health emergencies related to psychosis or mania”.

The post cautioned that these conversations were difficult to detect or measure, and that this was an initial analysis.

As OpenAI releases data on mental health issues related to its marquee product, the company is facing increased scrutiny following a highly publicised lawsuit from the family of a teenage boy who died by suicide after extensive engagement with ChatGPT. The Federal Trade Commission last month additionally launched a broad investigation into companies that create AI chatbots, including OpenAI, to find how they measure negative impacts on children and teens.

OpenAI claimed in its post that its recent GPT-5 update reduced the number of undesirable behaviors from its product and improved user safety in a model evaluation involving more than 1,000 self-harm and suicide conversations. The company did not immediately return a request for comment.

“Our new automated evaluations score the new GPT‑5 model at 91pc compliant with our desired behaviors, compared to 77pc for the previous GPT‑5 model,” the company’s post reads.

OpenAI stated that GPT-5 expanded access to crisis hotlines and added reminders for users to take breaks during long sessions. To make improvements to the model, the company said it enlisted 170 clinicians from its Global Physician Network of health care experts to assist its research over recent months, which included rating the safety of its model’s responses and helping write the chatbot’s answers to mental-health related questions.

Published in Dawn, October 29th, 2025