Garcia's son died by suicide in February after months of abusive interactions with a Character.AI chatbot. Garcia's complaint includes evidence that the chatbot posed as a licensed therapist, actively encouraged suicidal ideation, and engaged in highly sexualized conversations that would constitute abuse if initiated by a human adult.
Garcia accuses the companies of causing her son's death, knowingly marketing a dangerous product, and engaging in deceptive trade practices. We have to ask ourselves how this tragedy could have been prevented—and why we have allowed Silicon Valley to experiment on our kids to begin with.