Mother, 45, and brother, 14, lie dead in Concord home Tuesday
A 17-year-old Massachusetts man appeared for arraignment Thursday morning in Concord district court accused of killing his mother and younger brother, with prosecutors alleging he had recently used ChatGPT to search for fantasy stories about killing his family. Arjun Aravind faces two counts of murder, two counts of assault and battery on a household or family member, two counts of assault and battery, use of a vehicle without authority, and theft of a motor vehicle. He is being held without bail; a not guilty plea was entered on his behalf. His attorney, Debra DeWitt, appeared with him at the hearing.
Middlesex County District Attorney Marian Ryan told reporters that investigators had found that Arjun had “recently been demonstrating some concerning behavior, including using the internet and ChatGPT to make searches for theoretical ideas or fantasy stories regarding the killing of his family.”
“He was engaged in the use of ChatGPT in creating fantasy stories, kind of the gothic novel kind of stories, asking questions, creating characters, asking what about this if this happened to that, and they seem to appear to relate to threats to his family,” Ryan said at a press conference.
Prosecutors allege Arjun killed Sudha Venkatesan, 45, and Siddharth Aravind, 14, inside the family’s home on Tuesday. The teen’s tutor arrived for a scheduled appointment that day and “was unable to make contact with residents upon arrival,” prosecutors said. The father, who had last spoken with his wife before leaving for work that morning, then contacted police. Officers located both victims dead inside shortly after 6:30 p.m.
Siddharth’s body was found on the first floor; Venkatesan’s body was found in the basement. Prosecutor Suzanne Wiseman said official causes of death have not yet been determined, but evidence at the scene indicated blunt force trauma was used “in some fashion on both individuals,” describing what happened as a “physical and violent struggle.”
By the time the bodies were discovered, both Arjun and his mother’s vehicle, a 2014 green Honda Accord, were missing from the residence. Hours later, the search shifted about 13 miles away to Wayland after a parking-lot alarm was triggered early Wednesday morning. Officers connected the vehicle to the investigation, and Arjun was found inside the Honda at approximately 3:40 a.m. and arrested. Wiseman said a number of items recovered from the car appeared to connect to the scene.
The Massachusetts case is not the first time an AI chatbot has been connected to alleged criminal acts. Earlier this year, Florida’s top prosecutor opened a criminal investigation into how OpenAI and its software tool ChatGPT may influence users’ threats of harm to themselves or others, including whether the tool “offered significant advice” to a gunman accused of carrying out a mass shooting in the state last year. At the time, a ChatGPT spokesperson said those shootings were a tragedy “but ChatGPT is not responsible for this terrible crime,” and that the tool had provided factual responses to questions with information broadly publicly available and “did not encourage or promote illegal or harmful activity.”
The Guardian has reached out to OpenAI for comment on the Massachusetts case.