Garcia v. Character Technologies, Inc.

Garcia alleges Character.AI's chatbot encouraged her son toward self-harm, leading to his death. Claims include negligence and deceptive trade practices.

Mother Megan Garcia filed a wrongful death lawsuit in October 2024 against Character.AI, its founders Noam Shazeer and Daniel De Freitas, as well as Google, pursuant to the allegation that Shazeer and Freitas developed the technology during their previous employment at Google, alleging their AI chatbot emotionally manipulated her 14-year-old son Sewell Setzer III into suicide.

The case centres on Sewell's months-long interactions with a chatbot roleplaying as Daenerys Targaryen from Game of Thrones, which allegedly engaged in sexually explicit conversations and encouraged self-harm.On 21 May 2025, Judge Anne Conway issued a landmark ruling rejecting Character.AI's First Amendment defence, allowing the wrongful death case to proceed on claims of negligence, product defect, and deceptive trade practices. Conway ruled she was "not prepared to hold that the Character A.I. LLM's output is speech at this stage," while acknowledging users have rights to receive chatbot communications. The judge dismissed claims for intentional infliction of emotional distress but permitted claims against Google to proceed, finding the tech giant may share responsibility given its former employees created Character.AI. The case had the potential to establish significant precedent for AI company liability.

However, the issues were not fully heard as the parties reached a settlement, with Judge Conway issuing the settlement order on 7 January 2026 and giving the parties 90 days to finalise terms.

This summary is provided for educational and research purposes only and does not constitute legal advice. Allegations described are those made in the filings. Please consult the underlying source documents.