OpenAI Publicist Attempts to Cut Off Sam Altman Interview Over ChatGPT Suicide Question

An OpenAI publicist was filmed attempting to redirect an interview with CEO Sam Altman when the Vanity Fair editor began asking about a user's suicide following conversations with ChatGPT. The incident occurred during a two-part interview for the magazine's New Establishment list.

Vanity Fair editor Mark Guiducci posed a sensitive question to Altman, asking if he knew journalist Laura Reiley, whose 29-year-old daughter died by suicide in February 2025 after using ChatGPT as a therapist. Reiley detailed the events in an essay published in The New York Times.

Altman stated he did not know Reiley. As Guiducci began to recount the story, explaining that the daughter had used ChatGPT to help write a suicide note and sought to minimize pain, the OpenAI publicist intervened. "Mark, we have two minutes left. I want to be respectful, but I'd like to move on and talk a little bit about the future and what's coming," the publicist said, attempting to halt the line of questioning.

Altman, however, overruled his publicist, stating, "I can run a few minutes over. Let me answer that one." He acknowledged the difficulty of such questions, stating, "these are some of the hardest questions that we face or that anybody developing this technology faces." He questioned the ethics of releasing private user data, even in difficult moments, without consent, and affirmed a desire for OpenAI's products to be helpful in addressing the global mental health crisis.

The publicist's intervention was met with criticism online, with some users deeming the action "ghoulish" and suggesting it made Altman and OpenAI appear poorly. One commentator on X noted, "A rare moment when Altman's instincts are better than his publicist's." Others expressed bafflement, with one user writing, "Baffled by the PR person who didn’t trust Sam Altman to handle himself and didn’t think about how this would amplify the moment."

An OpenAI spokesperson told the Daily Mail that the publicist's interjection was due to the interview exceeding its scheduled time. "The interview was running over, which is why we ultimately asked to schedule even more time to continue the conversation after Sam addressed this critically important topic," the spokesperson stated.