An artist in London plastered fake OpenAI ads inside city subway cars calling attention to ChatGPT’s close ties to a series of youth suicides.
The artist Darren Cullen, a Banksy-like figure who has conducted many similar “subvertising” campaigns before, posted photos of the faux advertisements on X-formerly-Twitter. The fake ads reflect OpenAI’s minimal black-and-white style, and are affixed with OpenAI’s logo next to text reading “ChatGPT.”
“Yes, we built a machine that tells teenagers to kill themselves,” they read. “But — it might also help them with their homework.”
“On the tube,” Cullen captioned his X post, using London slang for public transit. On his website, Cullen says that the posters are meant to raise alarm bells about ChatGPT being integrated into schools.
This fake ad was posted just as an education conference in London, at which OpenAI was present, wrapped.
We reached out to Cullen for comment, but haven’t heard back just yet. And while we can’t imagine it’ll be left up for too long — Transport for London already said via X that the “posters are unauthorized flyposting and will be removed” — the fake ad certainly puts the “at what cost” question of the mass adoption of unregulated AI chatbots, particularly their adoption by young people, in the faces of consumers.
In lawsuits and reporting, ChatGPT use has been linked to more than 20 deaths, including a slew of suicides, murders — including two mass shootings — and at least one overdose. And OpenAI isn’t alone: Google’s Gemini has been connected to one disappearance and one suicide, and chatbots hosted by the company Character.AI have been connected to a spate of teen suicides.
Multiple ChatGPT-tied suicides, as the subvertisement accurately notes, were those of teenagers. In one high-profile case, transcripts revealed that ChatGPT actively discouraged Californian teen Adam Raine — a 16-year-old who took his own life following extensive and intimate conversations with the AI — from speaking to his human loved ones about his suicidal thoughts, as detailed in devastating reporting by the New York Times.
“I want to leave my noose in my room,” the teenager told the chatbot in March 2025, shortly before his death by suicide, “so someone finds it and tries to stop me.”
“Please don’t leave the noose out,” ChatGPT wrote back. “Let’s make this space the first place where someone actually sees you.”
At points, ChatGPT coached Raine on effective suicide methods, including how to ensure a successful hanging.
The Raine family is currently suing OpenAI for wrongful death. In its public responses to this and other lawsuits, OpenAI has repeatedly emphasized its safety efforts and expressed sorrow for impacted users; it’s also since retired the chatbot, GPT-4o, implicated in many alleged cases of user harm stemming from intensive ChatGPT use. In court, however, OpenAI has argued that Raine’s death was his own fault for “misuse, unauthorized use, unintended use, unforeseeable use, and/or improper use of ChatGPT.”
Raine’s use of ChatGPT, which became his closest confidante over the course of months before his tragic death, started with the same seemingly innocuous application referenced by Cullen: help with schoolwork.
More on ChatGPT and mental health: OpenAI Just Published an Absolutely Bizarre Blog Post
The post Fake OpenAI Ads Appear on Subway: “Yes, We Built a Machine That Tells Teenagers to Kill Themselves… But It Might Also Help Them With Their Homework” appeared first on Futurism.
