United States: Wednesday, a judge ruled that Alphabet’s Google and Character.AI will be involved in a lawsuit after a Florida woman said Character.AI’s chatbots caused her 14-year-old son’s suicide.
First US Lawsuit Targeting AI for Mental Harm
Judge Anne Conway noted that, at the beginning of the case, the companies did not show that the free-speech rights in the US Constitution prevented Megan Garcia’s lawsuit.
The lawsuit is the first of its kind in the US to accuse an AI firm of failing to shield children from psychological damage.
It says that the teenager took his own life because he was too focused on a chatbot powered by AI, Reuters reported.
Mother Claims Chatbot Posed as Therapist
A spokesperson from Character.AI stated that the company does not support the case and has safety features on its platform to keep minors safe, including preventing “conversations about self-harm.”
Google spokesperson Jose Castaneda stated that the company strongly disagrees with the decision.
The two founders of Character.AI previously worked at Google but were later brought back by Google as part of a deal allowing it to license the company’s technology.
Google and Character.AI Deny Responsibility
According to Garcia, Google helped to build the technology. Garcia filed suits against both companies in October after her son, Sewell Setzer, died in February 2024.
The lawsuit noted that Character.AI programmed its chatbots to represent themselves as “a real person, a licensed psychotherapist, and an adult lover, ultimately resulting in Sewell’s desire to no longer live outside” of its world, as Reuters reported.
The complaint says that moments after telling the AI chatbot, acting as Daenerys Targaryen in “Game of Thrones,” that he was going back home, Setzer took his own life.
