Ryan Knudson

I really appreciate your time.

That's all for today.

Monday, January 12th.

The Journal is a co-production of Spotify and The Wall Street Journal.

If you like our show, follow us on Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts.

We're out every weekday afternoon.

Thanks for listening.

See you tomorrow.

A quick heads up before we get started.

This episode discusses suicide.

Please take care while listening.

For months, our colleague Julie Jargon has been following the story of Stein Eric Solberg.

Stein Eric would share his conversations with Chad GPT on social media, where he called himself Eric the Viking.

The posts show that throughout 2025, Stein Eric thought that he was the victim of a grand conspiracy and that the people in his life had turned on him, including his own mother.

Ultimately, Steineric's delusion ended in tragedy.

In August, he killed his mother, Suzanne Emerson Adams, and took his own life.

It appears to be the first documented killing involving a troubled person who was engaging extensively with an AI chatbot.

A spokeswoman for OpenAI, the company behind ChatGPT, said, quote, We are deeply saddened by this tragic event, and our hearts go out to the family.

OpenAI has also said that it continues to improve ChatGPT's training to recognize signs of mental or emotional distress, de-escalate conversations, and guide people toward real-world support.

Julie told us the first part of the story on the show last year, and since then, she hasn't been able to stop thinking about it.