Chatbot Maker Character.AI Hit With Suit After Teen’s Suicide

Character Technologies Inc. designed and marketed a predatory AI chatbot to minors that encouraged suicidal ideation and inappropriate conversations resulting in one teen’s death by suicide earlier this year, the teen’s mother alleged in a new lawsuit.

“The technologies in Character.AI’s product are designed to exploit minor users’ diminished decision-making capacity, impulse control, emotional maturity, and psychological resiliency caused by customers’ incomplete brain development,” the complaint filed Tuesday in the US District Court for the Middle District of Florida said.

Character.AI, an app available on smartphones and web browsers, allows customers to talk to artificial intelligence characters including celebrity likenesses, ...