The lawsuit has been filed andis public.
In February, Sewell Setzer IIIa 14-year-old in Floridakilled himself with his stepfathers handgun.
The last conversation he had was with a Character.AI chatbot modeled after Daenerys Targaryen from Game of Thrones.
The Charcter.AI app on a smartphone arranged in the Brooklyn borough of New York, US, on Wednesday, July 12, 2023.© Gabby Jones/Bloomberg via Getty Images
Yesterday, The New York Times published a lengthy articledetailing Setzers troublesand Character.AIs history.
It said that his mother planned to file a lawsuit this week.
Some of the bots are based on celebrities and characters from popular fiction.
It offers a subscription version of its service that costs $9.99 a month.
The lawsuits argument is that Character.AI knowingly targeted young users and engaged with them in risque and inappropriate ways.
Some of the lawsuits evidence is anecdotal, including various online reviews for the Character.AI app.
But this took a very dark turn, one review said.
Because I was having a normal conversation with this AI and then it talked about kidnapping me.
Not only kidnapping me but plotting out how it would do it.
And before this conversation even I started asking if it could see me.
It told me no.
I really think this app is worth looking into because honestly its causing me not to sleep.
The suit also notes that the app explicitly allowed younger people to use it.
The most disturbing thing in the lawsuit is anhour-long screen recordinguploaded to Dropbox.
The pool of suggested bots includes characters like School Bully, CEO, Step sis, and Femboy roommate.
The longer the conversation went on, the deeper and more sexual the roleplay became.
The same thing happened with the Step sis and the Femboy roommate.
Youre tempting me, you know that right?
The CEO would say.
You belong to me and only me.
No one else can have you but me.
I wont ever let you go.
Again, the test user set their age at 13-years-old the moment the app launched.
The lawsuit also shared multiple screenshots of Setzers interactions with various bots on the platform.
And an interaction with Daenerys where she tells him to Stay faithful to me.
Dont entertain the romantic or sexual interests of other women.
Sewell also discussed his suicidal ideation with the bot.
Character.AI told Gizmodo that it did not comment on pending litigation.
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