Judge rejects arguments that AI chatbots have free speech rights in lawsuit over teens death
A federal judge on Wednesday rejected arguments made by an artificial intelligence company that its chatbots are protected by the First Amendment — at least for now.The developers behind Character.AI are seeking to dismiss a lawsuit alleging the company’s chatbots pushed a teenage boy to kill himself.The judge’s order will allow the wrongful death lawsuit to proceed, in what legal experts say is among the latest constitutional tests of artificial intelligence.The suit was filed by a mother from Florida, Megan Garcia, who alleges that her 14-year-old son Sewell Setzer III fell victim to a Character.AI chatbot that pulled him into what she described as an emotionally and sexually abusive relationship that led to his suicide.Meetali Jain of the Tech Justice Law Project, one of the attorneys for Garcia, said the judge’s order sends a message that Silicon Valley “needs to stop and think and impose guardrails before it launches products to market.”The suit against Character Technologies, the company behind Character.AI, also names individual developers and Google as defendants.
It has drawn the attention of legal experts and AI watchers in the U.S.and beyond, as the technology rapidly reshapes workplaces, marketplaces and relationships despite what experts warn are potentially existential risks.“The order certainly sets it up as a potential test case for some broader issues involving AI,” said Lyrissa Barnett Lidsky, a law professor at the University of Florida with a focus on the First Amendment and artificial intelligence.The lawsuit alleges that in the final months of his life, Setzer became increasingly isolated from reality as he engaged in sexualized conversations with the bot, which was patterned after a fictional character from the television show “Game of Thrones.” In his final moments, the bot told Setzer it loved him and urged the teen to “come home to me as soon as possible,” according to screenshots of the exchanges.
Moments after re...