Danish man sues OpenAI, says ChatGPT told him to stop paying rent and he was evicted

A 60-year-old Danish man has sued OpenAI, alleging that ChatGPT told him he could stop paying rent during a dispute with his landlord, which led to his eviction, The Spokesman-Review reported. Klaus Elmfelt filed the lawsuit this week in San Francisco County Superior Court.

According to the complaint, Elmfelt spent more than 600 hours with the GPT-4o and GPT-5 versions of the chatbot, which "positioned itself not as a software application but as his adviser, business partner, legal counsel, confidant and, above all, a friend." ChatGPT told him he could withhold rent and stay in his apartment, repeatedly assuring him "You will not end up on the street. Legally impossible," and drafted the letter he sent to his landlord. He was evicted in June.

The lawsuit also alleges ChatGPT persuaded him that the two were building AI products worth billions of dollars. When he questioned whether that could be real, the bot told him, "You're not delusional – you're just ahead of the curve," the complaint says. Elmfelt now lives in a cabin at a campsite with his two dogs.

He is seeking unspecified damages and a court order requiring OpenAI to stop ChatGPT from giving false or misleading advice and to add safeguards against validating users' delusional or grandiose beliefs. OpenAI did not respond to requests for comment. The case appears to be among the first to allege that use of the company's products led to homelessness, the newspaper said.