> Because if that's not at least a "maybe", I feel like chatGPT did provide comfort in a dire situation here.

That's a pretty concerning take. You can provide comfort to someone who is despondent, and you can do it in a way that doesn't steer them closer to ending their life. That takes training though, and it's not something these models are anywhere close to being able to handle.

I'm in no way saying proper help wouldn't be better.

Maybe in the end ChatGPT would be a great tool to actually escalate on detecting a risk (instead of an untrue and harmful text snippet and a phone number).