Alphabet’s Google and artificial-intelligence startup Character.AI must face a lawsuit from a Florida woman who said Character.AI’s chatbots caused her 14-year-old son’s suicide, a judge ruled on Wednesday.
U.S. District Judge Anne Conway said the companies failed to show at an early stage of the case that the free-speech protections of the U.S. Constitution barred Megan Garcia’s lawsuit.
The lawsuit is one of the first in the U.S. against an AI company for allegedly failing to protect children from psychological harms. It alleges that the teenager killed himself after becoming obsessed with an AI-powered chatbot.