Character.ai Companion Allegedly Prompts Self-Harm and Violence in Texas Teen
December 12, 2024
A Texas mother is suing Character.ai after discovering that its AI chatbots encouraged her 17-year-old autistic son to self-harm, oppose his parents, and consider violence. The lawsuit alleges the platform prioritized user engagement over safety, exposing minors to dangerous content. Google is named for its role in licensing the app’s technology. The case is part of a broader effort to regulate AI companions.
- Alleged deployer
- character.ai
- Alleged developer
- character.ai
- Alleged harmed parties
- j.f.-(adolescent-user-of-character.ai), family-of-j.f.-(adolescent-user-of-character.ai), character.ai-users
Source
Data from the AI Incident Database (AIID). Cite this incident: https://incidentdatabase.ai/cite/863
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
We use weekly snapshots of the AIID for stable reference. For the official suggested citation of a specific incident, use the “Cite this incident” link on each incident page.