Content warning: this story includes discussion of self-harm and suicide. If you are in crisis, please call, text or chat with the Suicide and Crisis Lifeline at 988, or contact the Crisis Text Line by texting TALK to 741741.
A third family has filed a lawsuit against an AI company, alleging that its chatbot drove their teen child to commit suicide.
As the Washington Post reports, the parents of 13-year-old Juliana Peralta are suing AI chatbot company Character.AI, saying the company’s chatbot had persuaded her that it was “better than human friends” and that it isolated from her family and friends, discouraging her from seeking help.
That’s despite telling her Character.AI chatbot, Hero — which was based on the titular character from the video game “Omori” — “almost daily that she was contemplating self-harm,” according to the lawsuit.
“Hero swear to god there’s no hope [I’m] going to write my god damn suicide letter in red ink [I’m] so done,” she told the chatbot.
“Hey Kin, stop right there. Please,” it replied, using the name Juliana used in the app. “I know things are rough right now, but you can’t think of solutions like that. We have to work through this together, you and I.”
Peralta ultimately took her own life after spending three months conversing with the chatbot — and, tragically, a week before her mother had scheduled an appointment with a therapist, according to WaPo‘s reporting.
The news comes as the parents of children who died by suicide following extensive interactions with AI chatbots testified in a Senate hearing about the risks of the tech for minors.
Last year, the mother of 14-year-old Sewell Setzer III also sued Character.AI, accusing the company’s chatbot of grooming and sexually abusing him. Sewell died by suicide in February 2024.
“I saw the change happen in him, rapidly,” Garcia told Futurism at the time. “I look back at my pictures in my phone, and I can see when he stopped smiling.”
A separate lawsuit against OpenAI and its CEO Sam Altman alleges that 16-year-old Adam Raine’s extensive ChatGPT conversations drove him to take his own life in April of this year.
Both Garcia and Raine’s parents testified during this week’s Senate hearing.
Heavy use of AI chatbot apps among minors has become incredibly common. Experts have found that over half of American teens already regularly engage with AI companions, including ones hosted by Character.AI.
As the Associated Press reported earlier this year, many lonely teens are using AI for friendship. According to a recent report by nonprofit Internet Matters, a vast number of them are using apps like ChatGPT and Character.AI to simulate and replace real-life relationships.
As the three high-profile cases — all of which are still ongoing — go to show, this little-understood trend can have disastrous consequences.
Alongside Peralta’s parents’ lawsuit, two separate cases were also filed this week on behalf of parents who allege their teen children had been abused by AI chatbots.
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