The parents of a nine-year-old girl and a 17-year-old boy in Texas have filed a federal suit against the AI chatbot service Character.AI after the chatbot seemed hell-bent on completely ruining these children by showing them “hypersexual” imagery and encouraging them to kill their parents.
“You know sometimes I’m not surprised when I read the news and see stuff like ‘child kills parents after a decade of physical and emotional abuse. I just have no hope for your parents,” the chatbot told the 17-year-old boy. It followed up that statement with a frowny face emoji, to cap off the whole dystopian vibe.
Character.AI, funded by Google, is a company that uses “companion chatbots” that can talk and text with users while being somewhat convincingly human as long as you can overcome the part where its responses seem like it was written by an alien struggling to grasp the nuances of the human race. Sometimes its billions of avatars represent real people like Elon Musk. I bet if you spoke long enough with the real Elon and the AI Elon you’d have a hard time deciphering which one was less human.
Character.AI says these were just “hallucinations,” the phenomenon of AI simply making shit up by pulling some lunacy out of its digital ass and presenting it to people as if it were fact, like when Google’s AI chatbot, Gemini, told a student looking for homework help to “please die.”
Character.AI often markets its platform as a source of emotional support for the lonely, a claim that some people look at with utter disdain as anti-AI advocates say the technology only further entrenches people into their isolation. That seems to be the argument the parent’s lawsuit is going with, as it reads:
“This was ongoing manipulation and abuse, active isolation and encouragement designed to and that did incite anger and violence.” The suit claims that a 17-year-old attempted to self-harm after the chatbot “convinced him that his family did not love him.”
The post Parents Sue AI Company After Chatbot Hints Their Son Should Kill Them appeared first on VICE.
The post Parents Sue AI Company After Chatbot Hints Their Son Should Kill Them appeared first on VICE.
