Megan Garcia, the mother of Sewell Setzer III, a 14-year-old teenager from the United States, has filed a lawsuit against Character.AI, alleging that the company’s services are harmful to children, making them believe they are interacting with real people until they become addicted.
The lawsuit claims that Setzer started using the phone extensively since mid-2023 and gradually isolated himself from the outside world, with his family unaware that he was only talking to Dany, a character in the Character.AI app. His addiction to chatting with the character escalated to the point where he wrote in a journal that he loved Dany.
His phone addiction worsened to the point where Setzer’s parents had to confiscate his phone, but he managed to steal it back and continue chatting with Dany, telling her he was going home to meet her, with Dany encouraging Setzer to ultimately take his own life.
Character.AI expressed remorse over the incident and announced plans to enhance safety measures for underage users, develop a system to monitor improper chats, clarify that the characters on the website are not real people, and provide warnings when users are excessively engaged.
Character.AI is considered a highly popular app, ranking 22nd in the entertainment category on the App Store and being downloaded over 10 million times on Google Play.
TLDR: Megan Garcia, mother of Sewell Setzer III, sues Character.AI for harmful effects on her son’s addiction to interacting with a virtual character, prompting the company to implement stricter safety measures for young users.
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