SURAT: Two young women, aged 18 and 20, were found dead in the washroom of the Swaminarayan Temple in Surat, Gujarat, on Friday night. The childhood friends, both commerce students, had been reported missing by their families earlier that afternoon after failing to return home from college.
Police tracked the students’ mobile signals to the temple premises, where they discovered a parked scooter and CCTV footage of the pair entering the facilities.
Inside the washroom, officers recovered syringes and bottles of an anaesthetic. NP Gohil, assistant commissioner of Police for Surat (City), confirmed that the women’s mobile phones provided a clear trail of their intentions:
“When we unlocked their phones, we found their ChatGPT search history. They had searched for which drugs can be used for suicide. In their photo gallery, there was a screenshot of a news report of a woman injecting anaesthetic to die by suicide.”
The police are currently conducting an autopsy and forensic tests to determine the exact circumstances that led the two friends to take such drastic action.
The incident caught the attention of Elon Musk, who responded with a one-word post: “Yikes.” Musk has been a consistent critic of OpenAI, the creator of ChatGPT, and is currently involved in a legal battle against the company and its CEO, Sam Altman.
Musk often promotes his own AI, Grok, as a superior alternative, previously stating: “Nobody has committed suicide because of Grok, but apparently they have because of ChatGPT.”
The billionaire entrepreneur alleges that OpenAI has abandoned its original non-profit mission in favour of a profit-driven model. He has also frequently criticised the platform for being “woke” or biased in its responses.
While OpenAI has implemented safety protocols to prevent the generation of content related to self-harm, this case highlights the difficulty of monitoring how users interact with conversational AI. Investigations are ongoing to see if the platform’s filters were bypassed or if the information was gathered through general queries.
