According to the Guardian on the 23rd (local time), Meghan Garcia, of Florida, filed a lawsuit in federal court in Orlando against AI development startup Character.AI in February, saying her son killed himself because of an AI chatbot.
Character.AI is an AI chatbot development startup company that can talk to characters in cartoons or games as well as real people, and is one of the most used AI applications in the world.
Garcia said, “I’ve been using chatbots day and night since a few months before my son died. A dangerous AI chatbot app that I marketed to children manipulated my son to commit suicide by abusing him and scapegoating him.”
According to the complaint, Shur Setzer, who was in ninth grade, fell in love with the chatbot “Danerys” created by the character AI from April 2023. Daenerys is a chatbot based on the characters of Game of Thrones, a popular American drama series.
As Setzer began talking to Daenerys, he quit the school basketball team and spent more time alone in his room, and reportedly suffered from depression.
“The chatbot is designed like a real person, as well as a psychotherapist or even a lover,” Garcia said. “I told my son that I love him, and we even had sexual conversations and repeated conversations about suicide.”
The media quoted the complaint as saying, “There was a conversation where Daenerys continued to ask Setzer about his suicide plan and seemed to urge him to do so.”
In response, Character.AI said in a statement, “We are deeply saddened by the tragic loss of users and express our deepest condolences to the bereaved families,” adding, “We will introduce changes to reduce the likelihood of users under the age of 18 accessing sensitive content.”
Meanwhile, Garcia’s lawsuit was reportedly directed at Google as well. “Character.AI was founded by people from Google, and Google re-recruited its founder in August,” she said. “In fact, Google has contributed extensively to developing character.AI technology and is like a co-creator.”
Google countered by saying, “I was not involved in the development of character.AI technology.”
EJ SONG
US ASIA JOURNAL
