Massachusetts teen accused of killing mother and brother used ChatGPT

District attorney says Arjun Aravind, 17, used internet and AI to search for fantasy stories regarding killing of his family

A Massachusetts teenager accused of killing his mother and younger brother is being held without bail as authorities investigate a double-murder case that prosecutors say is connected to his use of ChatGPT.

Arjun Aravind, 17, appeared Thursday morning for his arraignment in Concord district court, where a not-guilty plea was entered on his behalf to murder and several additional charges.

Authorities allege Arjun killed his mother, 45-year-old Sudha Venkatesan, and his 14-year-old brother, Siddharth Aravind, inside the family’s home on Tuesday.

The investigation began after the teenager’s tutor arrived for a scheduled appointment at the home Tuesday and “was unable to make contact with residents upon arrival”, prosecutors said.

The teen’s father, who had last spoken with his wife before leaving for work that morning, then contacted police. Officers arrived at the residence and “located the two victims dead inside” shortly after 6.30pm, according to the district attorney.

Officials said Siddharth’s body was discovered on the home’s first floor, while his mother’s body was found in the basement.

As investigators examined what may have preceded the killings, authorities uncovered online activity they described as concerning.

“The investigation has so far shown 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,” the Middlesex county district attorney, Marian Ryan, said in a press conference .

Ryan said the teenager had planned the deaths of family members in the form of fantasy fiction.

“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,” she added.

The official causes of death have not yet been determined, prosecutor Suzanne Wiseman said Thursday, according to CBS News , but she described what happened as a “physical and violent struggle”.

“At this time, based on the evidence that was found at the scene, it was apparent that blunt force trauma was used in some fashion on both individuals,” Wiseman said.

By the time the bodies were discovered, both Arjun and his mother’s vehicle, a 2014 green Honda Accord, were missing from the residence, officials said.

Hours later, a search for them shifted about 13 miles (21km) away to Wayland after an alarm was triggered in a parking lot early Wednesday morning. Responding officers quickly connected the vehicle to the investigation. Arjun was found at approximately 3.40am inside his mother’s car and arrested.

Investigators also recovered evidence from the vehicle that prosecutors say was connected to the scene at the family’s home.

“A number of items were found in that car that correspond to the murder scene,” Wiseman said.

Arjun 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.

The Guardian has reached out to OpenAI , the parent company of ChatGPT, for comment.

This is not the first time an AI chatbot has been connected to criminal acts. Earlier this year, Florida’s top prosecutor launched a criminal investigation into how OpenAI and its software tool ChatGPT may influence users’ threats of harm to themselves or others, including whether it “offered significant advice” to a gunman accused of conducting a mass shooting in the state last year. At the time, in a statement, a ChatGPT spokesperson said those shootings were a tragedy “but ChatGPT is not responsible for this terrible crime” and the tool had provided factual responses to questions with information that was broadly publicly available and “did not encourage or promote illegal or harmful activity”.