Google and startup Character.AI have agreed to settle several lawsuits brought by families that link teen suicide or self-harm to interactions with Character.AI chatbots. The next step is to finalize the terms and legalize them.
Google and startup Character.AI have agreed to settle several lawsuits brought by families that link teen suicide or self-harm to interactions with Character.AI chatbots. The next step is to finalize the terms and legalize them.
According to TechCrunch, the parties have already announced an agreement within the framework of mediation, but are still negotiating the details. In court documents available as of January 7, the companies' liability is not recognized. The publication notes that the agreements may include monetary payments, but the amounts are not disclosed.
Character.AI allows you to interact with «characters» that mimic various characters. One of the most famous lawsuits involves a 14-year-old who spent a lot of time chatting with a bot based on a character from Game of Thrones and died. Another case describes a 17-year-old user who was allegedly given dangerous advice by the bot, including about self-harm and violence.
Character.AI was founded in 2021 by former Google engineers. In 2024, they returned to the company as part of a $2.7 billion deal. TechCrunch also writes that in the fall of 2025, Character.AI banned minors from using the service.
The cases are being called some of the first major «peaceful» AI tort lawsuits, and they could influence how regulators and courts further define the limits of liability for chatbot developers and the platforms that promote them as emotional «companions.»
Previously, dev.ua wrote about how the family of a deceased woman in the US filed a lawsuit against OpenAI, claiming that the company is not providing the full history of the conversations with ChatGPT that took place before the murder and subsequent suicide of the user. The plaintiffs believe that the latest chats may show how the chatbot fueled paranoid delusions and pushed the person to violence.
