Character AI Chatbot Lawsuit: Imaginary Friends and Real Guns

Winter is coming, and the night just got darker and full of unthinkable horrors. I’ve never thought that GoT would become a prelude to a real-life tragedy.

This was the only TV show that got my family’s unanimous attention and acceptance to this day. It goes without saying that for our daughter to watch it my wife and I had to do some serious PG-13 heavy lifting. We had two parallel-watching sessions. Some episodes had to be left out and for some scenes, our daughter had to leave the room and get back after we were done with the fast-forwarding. It was worth it. Our daughter’s room was covered with her drawings of dragons and pictures of Dany Targaryen. We got carried away. There’s a huge picture of her sitting on the Iron Throne replica in our living room. I still remember waiting for hours in line and sharing my pain with other parents at the local GamesCon, so our kids could live out their fantasies for a brief moment. Those were some different and innocent pre-AI times.

Today’s kids aren’t any different. They still want the same things, but the available tools are next level.

I really wanted to write a nice and inspirational AI chatbot story, but… As soon as I typed “ai chatbot” in Google, I got slammed with the news headlines. Do it and see for yourself.

The New York Times and The Verge were the most objective and restrained. I don’t recommend you go down the rabbit hole of The Washington Post and Reddit comments.

I consider that my choice for the story’s illustration is appropriate because of the genuine desire of its author to express his feelings and protest at the same time. I feel the same way about my story’s title.

No, I’m not going to share what happened because I want you to spend some time researching and then getting back to continue reading with the right kind of emotions and respect. I just can’t TL:DR someone’s life for your convenience. As a parent, I feel that I just dodged a digital bullet because my daughter is now old enough to have real instead of imaginary friends. For kids, an age gap of only a few years is the equivalent of decades for adults.

Character AI lawsuit just got caught in the crossfire between the two most polarizing issues, one of the tech and the other of political nature.

The First Issue - The minimum age for using AI

The minimum age for minors to interact with AI ranges from 13 to 16. It’s 13 in the USA and mostly 16 in Europe. The Kids Online Safety Act (KOSA) has been around in the House and Senate since 2022. Why it’s taking so long to protect kids?

“It’s a political issue that has bipartisan support, while also appearing to be extremely difficult to govern without infringing on First Amendment protections.” And, there’s this, as well, the KOSA “would require online platforms to take actions to protect the safety of users under the age of 17.”

The bipartisan support has become so rare that when you hear about it, you know without going into the details it’s a very serious matter. Unfortunately, we also have to accept the reality of another kind of “bipartisan support” between the First Amendment “absolutists” and the Big Tech opportunitists. So, nothing is going to change here.

The lawsuit “also named Google and its parent company Alphabet in the filing. Character.AI's founders worked at Google before launching their product and were re-hired by the company in August as part of a deal granting it a non-exclusive licence to Character.AI's technology.”

The most reasonable suggestion of Character AI Reddit fans is doomed to fall on deaf ears:

The Second Issue - Gun Control

The second issue is all about the Second Amendment. Isn’t it ironic to have this kind of semantic “alignment?” The countless mass shootings haven’t changed a thing about the gun control debate. Sadly, one more young innocent life that’s lost can only prolong a series of pointless debates. The blaming game has no beginning and obviously will have no end:

What can you possibly expect to change after reading the comments such as these?

What Is Going To Be The Most Likely Outcome of Character.AI Chatbot Lawsuit?

It seems that at Character.AI, they’re preparing for and expecting a settlement. I did my best to check the dates. Almost the same day the lawsuit was officially filled, the company published a list of Community Safety Updates on its official blog page:

“Moving forward, we will be rolling out a number of new safety and product features that strengthen the security of our platform without compromising the entertaining and engaging experience users have come to expect from Character.AI. These include:

• Changes to our models for minors (under the age of 18) that are designed to reduce the likelihood of encountering sensitive or suggestive content.
• Improved detection, response, and intervention related to user inputs that violate our Terms or Community Guidelines.
• A revised disclaimer on every chat to remind users that the AI is not a real person.
• Notification when a user has spent an hour-long session on the platform with additional user flexibility in progress.”

Who is praying for Sewell Setzer III who was only 14 years old when he “died by suicide on February 28th, 2024, “seconds” after his last interaction with the bot?”