The mother of 14-year-old Sewell Setzer has filed a lawsuit in Orlando, Florida federal court against Character.AI for the murder of her son.
Sewell had died by suicide allegedly after having a conversation with Daenerys Targaryen AI chatbot. He had fallen in love with the AI chatbot, but shot himself with his stepfather’s handgun in February this year.
The chatbot Daenerys Targaryen was named after the leading character from the drama series Game of Thrones.
Sewell’s mother, Megan Garcia, has claimed that her son became addicted to the artificial intelligence chatbot startup Character.AI service, and then became deeply attached to a chatbot it created.
She also claimed that the deceased expressed thoughts of suicide to the chatbot, which the chatbot repeatedly brought up again.
Reuters reported that the mother of the deceased also targeted Alphabet’s Google, where Character.AI’s founders worked before launching their product.
Garcia said that Google had contributed to the development of Character.AI’s technology so extensively it could be considered a “co-creator.”
“Character.AI targeted her son, Sewell Setzer, with “anthropomorphic, hypersexualized, and frighteningly realistic experiences”,” claimed Megan Garcia in a lawsuit.
According to NBC News, a screenshot of Sewell’s last conversation shows him writing to the bot: “I promise I will come home to you. I love you so much, Dany,” as mentioned in lawsuit.
“I love you too, Daenero,” the chatbot responded, the suit says. “Please come home to me as soon as possible, my love.”
She said the company programmed its chatbot to “misrepresent itself as a real person, a licensed psychotherapist, and an adult lover, ultimately resulting in Sewell’s desire to no longer live outside” of the world created by the service.
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