The pile of major AI ethics lawsuits against Google has finally come to an end.
According till new York TimesThe family of a deceased 14-year-old boy named Sewell Setzer III has agreed to settle a lawsuit against Google and AI subsidiary Character.AI out of court for an undisclosed amount. In a filing submitted Wednesday, the parties involved said they have agreed “to resolve all claims,” though the exact terms of the settlement have not been finalized.
Setzer’s case made headlines, although his case was one of five prosecuted Agreement reached with tech companies This week.
In the summer of 2024, Google $3 billion invested at Character.AI, which hosts a virtual library of thousands of chatbot personalities and soon became increasingly popular among teenagers. But it quickly became clear that the platform was barely moderated, hosting bots modeled after child predators, school shooters and eating disorder coaches.
In an even darker twist, Character.AI was soon linked to a wave of numerous youth suicides and other serious consequences for young people.
For example, after Setzer’s death, her mother learned that her last conversation was with an AI chatbot modeled after the “Game of Thrones” character Daenerys Targaryen and revolved around suicide.
In one of his last messages to the bot, the Character.AI personality generated text asking Setzer to “please come to my house as soon as possible.”
“What if I told you I could come home right now?” Sewell replied. “…Please do, my dear king,” the AI replied. Soon after, Setzer took his own life with his father’s gun.
“I think it’s a great experiment,” Setzer’s mother, Megan Garcia, told NYT At the time, “and my baby was just collateral damage.”
Haley Hinkle, policy attorney at FairPlay, a nonprofit that works to promote online child safety, said NYT Don’t view the agreement as the final word on the issue. “We are just beginning to see the harm that AI will do to children if it goes unchecked,” Hinkle said.
While we don’t know what the giant tech companies offered Setzer’s family as compensation, their settlement comes just months after Character.AI banned all minors under the age of 18 from accessing the platform.
The crackdown on minors was an important step for the platform since teenagers make a big part Of its userbase. As part of the new enforcement arrangement, Character.AI said it has developed a new in-house tool to identify minors based on their interactions with the platform’s chatbot, and has partnered with a third-party company to verify the age of users based on government IDs.
As far as Google and Character.AI are concerned, it’s possible that they were apprehensive about a court case that would potentially expose their internal processes and communications as the bots were developed, giving both companies enough reason to offer a generous out-of-court settlement.
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