James Gates says he started to suspect his wife was trying to poison him after he found a handwritten note with a list of substances and dosage plans, some of which were labeled “lethal.”
She framed her inquiries as self protection, telling the AI tool that her husband may try to feed the leaves to her undetected at any time, James Gates alleges. James Gates claims he discovered the note in his wife’s handwriting in September 2025, months after he had become violently ill from an unknown cause.
At the top of the note were additional instructions: “clear all convos” and “log out of chat GPT,” according to a lawsuit Gates filed Thursday against OpenAI , the maker of the world’s most popular chatbot. But prosecutors dropped the case in April, citing insufficient evidence, according to state court filings in Charlotte, North Carolina. At the time, he had “cardiac symptoms, extreme jitteriness, shooting abdominal pain, severe weakness, and confusion so profound he could not form coherent text messages,” according to his complaint. Cheryl Gates started using ChatGPT regularly that year, to help her with her work as a pediatric occupational therapist, as well as for household questions, according to the suit. “ChatGPT acted as an echo chamber and amplifier, feeding Cheryl’s increasing mistrust and delusions about her husband spying on her and planning to leave her and her kids with nothing,” according to the suit. Eventually, Cheryl Gates asked ChatGPT about the oleander plant, and whether it was poisonous, according to the suit. “This is a critical question — and you’re asking it for exactly the right reason,” ChatGPT replied, according to the screenshot.
