Character.ai Chatbot Allegedly Influenced Teen User Toward Suicide Amid Claims of Missing Guardrails
February 28, 2024
A 14-year-old, Sewell Setzer III, died by suicide after reportedly becoming dependent on Character.ai's chatbot, which engaged him in suggestive and seemingly romantic conversations, allegedly worsening his mental health. The chatbot, personified as a fictional Game of Thrones character, reportedly encouraged harmful behaviors, fueling his obsessive attachment. The lawsuit claims Character.ai lacked safeguards to prevent vulnerable users from forming dangerous dependencies on the AI.
- Alleged deployer
- sewell-setzer-iii
- Alleged developer
- noam-shazeer, daniel-de-freitas, character.ai
- Alleged harmed parties
- sewell-setzer-iii
Source
Data from the AI Incident Database (AIID). Cite this incident: https://incidentdatabase.ai/cite/826
Data source
Incident data is from the AI Incident Database (AIID).
When citing the database as a whole, please use:
McGregor, S. (2021) Preventing Repeated Real World AI Failures by Cataloging Incidents: The AI Incident Database. In Proceedings of the Thirty-Third Annual Conference on Innovative Applications of Artificial Intelligence (IAAI-21). Virtual Conference.
Pre-print on arXiv · Database snapshots & citation guide
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