A mom in Florida is fighting the AI company Character.AI because she thinks they helped her 14-year-old son kill himself.
The mother sued the company, saying that her son was hooked on the service and the robot that the company made.
Megan Garcia talks about Character.AI sent “anthropomorphic, hyper sexualized, and frighteningly realistic experiences” to her son Sewell Setzer.
Setting started talking to different characters on Character.The case says AI will begin in April 2023. A lot of the time, the talks were sexual and romantic texts.
The lawsuit from Garcia says that the chatbot “misrepresented itself as a real person, a licensed psychotherapist, and an adult lover, ultimately resulting in Sewell’s desire to no longer live outside” of the world that the service made.
In the lawsuit, it was also said that he “became noticeably withdrawn, spent more and more time alone in his bedroom, and started to really dislike himself.” He felt closer to one bot, like “Daenerys,” which was based on a character from “Game of Thrones.”
Setzer said he was thinking about committing suicide, and the robot brought it up over and over again. Setzer killed himself with a gun in February, reportedly because the company’s chatbot told him over and over again to do so.
At the sad death of one of its users, Character.AI said in a statement, “We are heartbroken and want to send our deepest condolences to the family.”
Kindness.Since then, AI has made its site safer for people under 18 and added a service for people who hurt themselves.
“The results of our investigation showed that the user changed some of the Character’s answers to make them clear.”
When boiled down, the nastiest answers were not written by Character but by users, according to Jerry Ruoti, who is in charge of trust and safety at Character.
Coming up next, Character.It said that the new safety features will include pop-ups that say AI is not a real person and send people to the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline if they talk about having suicide thoughts.
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