Google and chatbot-building startup Character.AI have agreed to settle multiple lawsuits from families whose teens died by suicide or self-inflicted harm after interacting with Character.AI's chatbot.
These negotiations are among the first settlements in lawsuits accusing AI tools of contributing to mental health crises and suicides among teenagers.
OpenAI is facing a nearly identical lawsuit over the death of a 16-year-old boy, while Meta has come under scrutiny for having its AI engage in provocative conversations with minors. As these companies compete to develop and monetize AI chatbots, they spend millions to make their large language models more friendly, helpful, and ultimately keep users coming back.
In October 2024, Florida-based Megan Garcia filed a lawsuit against Character.AI, claiming that the company, which allows people to have detailed, personal conversations with AI chatbots, was responsible for the death of her 14-year-old son Sewell Setzer III. He had died by suicide a few months earlier.
A court filing Wednesday in the Garcia case said an agreement was reached between Character.AI, its founders Noam Shazier and Daniel de Freitas, and Google. In 2024, the search giant hired Character.AI's founder, a former Google employee, and paid him for non-exclusive rights to use the startup's technology. The startup remains an independent legal entity.
Terms of the settlement were not immediately available.
Defendants have settled four similar lawsuits in New York, Colorado, and Texas. According to court documents this week.
Matthew Bergman, the family's legal representative along with Google and Character.AI, did not immediately respond to Business Insider's request for comment.
Garcia's lawsuit said the company failed to implement safeguards to prevent her son from forming an inappropriate and intimate relationship with the company's chatbot. The suit alleges that Setzer was sexually solicited and abused by the technology, and that the chatbot failed to respond appropriately when Setzer began talking about self-harm.
“When an adult does that, there is mental and emotional harm. When a chatbot does that, the same mental and emotional harm exists,” Garcia told Business Insider in an interview last year. “So who is responsible for what humans do to other humans, which we consider to be crimes?”
