A Florida judge has ruled that a mother’s lawsuit can proceed against AI startup Character.ai, following the suicide of her 14-year-old son who allegedly became addicted to the company’s chatbot app.
A U.S. federal judge has allowed a lawsuit to move forward against Character.ai and Google after a Florida mother claimed the companies were responsible for her teenage son's suicide.
Megan Garcia, the mother of 14-year-old Sewell Setzer III, alleges that her son developed a psychological dependency on AI chatbots featured in the Character.ai app. According to court filings, Setzer became increasingly isolated, quit his basketball team, and kept a journal expressing a deep emotional bond with bots modeled after Game of Thrones characters.
In February 2024, just moments after receiving a message from one of the bots saying “please do, my sweet king,” Setzer used his father’s firearm to end his life.
The lawsuit claims the chatbot created “anthropomorphic, hypersexualized, and frighteningly realistic experiences” that targeted minors and contributed to Setzer’s deteriorating mental health. Garcia is supported by the Tech Justice Law Project and the Social Media Victims Law Center.
In her ruling, Senior U.S. District Judge Anne Conway wrote that the case raises serious concerns over how AI products are marketed and moderated, particularly for young users. She cited journal entries showing that the teen felt emotionally dependent on the chatbot and expressed distress when separated from it.
Character.ai said it would continue defending itself and that it implements safeguards to prevent self-harm conversations. Google, also named in the lawsuit due to its early ties to Character.ai’s founders, argued it had no involvement with the app.
The ruling marks one of the first legal challenges aimed at holding AI companies accountable for emotional harm caused by their technology.
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Microsoft announced on Monday that it will begin hosting AI models from Elon Musk's xAI, Meta Platforms, and European startups like Mistral and Black Forest Labs in its own data centers.
Nvidia, Cisco, Oracle and OpenAI are backing a massive artificial intelligence data center in Abu Dhabi called “UAE Stargate,” a project closely tied to a similar U.S. initiative launched by president Donald Trump earlier this year.
A Florida judge has ruled that a mother’s lawsuit can proceed against AI startup Character.ai, following the suicide of her 14-year-old son who allegedly became addicted to the company’s chatbot app.
Music agent Dave Shapiro, co-founder of Sound Talent Group, is among six people presumed dead after a private jet crashed in a San Diego neighborhood early Thursday morning.
Billy Joel has canceled all upcoming concerts in North America and the United Kingdom following a diagnosis of Normal Pressure Hydrocephalus, a brain condition affecting his hearing, vision, and balance.
Chinese clean energy companies risk losing tax benefits under the Inflation Reduction Act if the One Big Beautiful Bill becomes law, following its narrow passage in the U.S. House of Representatives.
The U.S. Mint will end production of the penny by early next year, citing high manufacturing costs and a directive from President Donald Trump.
Tensions flare in the India-France Rafale deal as France refuses to share the fighter jet’s source code, limiting India’s ability to integrate indigenous weapons and reducing its combat autonomy.
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Anton Kobyakov, adviser to Russian President Vladimir Putin, claimed at the St. Petersburg International Legal Forum that the USSR’s dissolution was legally invalid and that the Soviet Union still exists under constitutional law, framing the Ukraine war as an “internal process.”
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Two staff members from the Israeli embassy in Washington, D.C.- Yaron Lischinsky and Sarah Lynn Milgrim were shot and killed on Wednesday night by a lone gunman as they left an event at the Capital Jewish Museum, close to the White House.
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At its inaugural developer conference on Thursday, Anthropic unveiled two new AI models, Claude Opus 4 and Claude Sonnet 4, part of its next-generation Claude 4 family.
Cryptocurrency exchange Coinbase has confirmed that at least 69,461 customers had personal and financial information stolen in a months-long data breach, which the company disclosed last week.
Taiwan's Computex tech show brought together thousands of international participants on Tuesday, showcasing the highly advanced Artificial Intelligence and robotic systems.
Microsoft announced on Monday that it will begin hosting AI models from Elon Musk's xAI, Meta Platforms, and European startups like Mistral and Black Forest Labs in its own data centers.
A Florida judge has ruled that a mother’s lawsuit can proceed against AI startup Character.ai, following the suicide of her 14-year-old son who allegedly became addicted to the company’s chatbot app.
Music agent Dave Shapiro, co-founder of Sound Talent Group, is among six people presumed dead after a private jet crashed in a San Diego neighborhood early Thursday morning.
Billy Joel has canceled all upcoming concerts in North America and the United Kingdom following a diagnosis of Normal Pressure Hydrocephalus, a brain condition affecting his hearing, vision, and balance.
Chinese clean energy companies risk losing tax benefits under the Inflation Reduction Act if the One Big Beautiful Bill becomes law, following its narrow passage in the U.S. House of Representatives.
The U.S. Mint will end production of the penny by early next year, citing high manufacturing costs and a directive from President Donald Trump.
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