Darren Zhou was 25 years old and worked as a financial analyst in Florida when he wrote something he never imagined would give him away.
He had ended a six-month relationship and could not accept it. He insisted again and again on getting back together with her. She said no. Then Zhou began venting to ChatGPT, and in March those conversations took a dark turn: he spoke of sexual assault, suicide, and finally wrote the phrase that changed everything: “If I can’t have her, no one will”.
What Zhou did not know was that OpenAI has a team that reviews these types of conversations when it detects a real risk of harm to others. It was not a passing vent: an agent who analyzed the records described a pattern of rehearsal and planning. In May, those messages reached the Palm Beach County Sheriff’s Office, and the investigation ended with his arrest and subsequent conviction. The machine he used to talk about his obsession ended up being the one that prevented him from carrying it out.
