Mother can proceed with lawsuit over son’s suicide tied to chatbot use

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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