4mo ago

Mother sues Character.ai, Google over son's death tied to chatbot obsession

www.techspot.com Mother sues Character.ai, Google over son's death tied to chatbot obsession

Megan Garcia said her son chatted continuously with the bots provided by Character.ai in the months before his death on February 28, 2024, "seconds" after his final...

Megan Garcia said her son chatted continuously with the bots provided by Character.ai in the months before his death on February 28, 2024, "seconds" after his final interaction with the AI.

Case file: https://s3.documentcloud.org/documents/25248089/megan-garcia-vs-character-ai.pdf

4 comments

The suit says that Setzer repeatedly expressed thoughts about suicide to the bot. The chatbot asked him if he had devised a plan for killing himself. Setzer admitted that he had but that he did not know if it would succeed or cause him great pain. The chatbot allegedly told him: "That's not a reason not to go through with it."
Yeah...
They should be liable.

Dude made a hunch of bots based on Game of Thrones and “fell in love” with the mother of dragons.
The complaint states that Garcia took her son's phone away after he got in trouble at school. She found a message to "Daenerys" that read, "What if I told you I could come home right now?"
The chatbot responded with, "P]lease do, my sweet king." Sewell shot himself with his stepfather's pistol "seconds" later, the lawsuit said.

The kid was having issues, he was just given a diagnosis for anxiety and other stuff and he was seeing a therapist yet his parents left a loaded gun somewhere he could access and use within seconds.

I'm sure family issues weren't the cause, and the chat bot wasn't a symptom. /s