Tag Archives: Character.ai

That is the setting I was confronted with this morning. It revolves around a story (at https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/ce3xgwyywe4o) where we see ‘‘A predator in your home’: Mothers say chatbots encouraged their sons to kill themselves’ a mere 10 hours ago. Now I get the caution, because even suicide requires investigation and the BBC is not the proper setting for that. But we are given “Ms Garcia tells me in her first UK interview. “And it is much more dangerous because a lot of the times children hide it – so parents don’t know.”

Within ten months, Sewell, 14, was dead. He had taken his own life” with the added “Ms Garcia and her family discovered a huge cache of messages between Sewell and a chatbot based on Game of Thrones character Daenerys Targaryen. She says the messages were romantic and explicit, and, in her view, caused Sewell’s death by encouraging suicidal thoughts and asking him to “come home to me”.” There is a setting that is of a conflicting nature. Even as we are given “the first parent to sue Character.ai for what she believes is the wrongful death of her son. As well as justice for him, she is desperate for other families to understand the risks of chatbots.” What is missing is that there is no AI, at most it is depend machine learning and that implies a programmer, what some call an AI engineer. And when we are given “A Character.ai spokesperson told the BBC it “denies the allegations made in that case but otherwise cannot comment on pending litigation”” We are confronted with two streams. The first is that some twisted person took his programming options a little to Eagerly Beaverly like and created a self harm algorithm and that leads to two sides, the first either accepts that, or they pushed him along to create other options and they are covering for him. CNN on September 17th gave us ‘More families sue Character.AI developer, alleging app played a role in teens’ suicide and suicide attempt’ and it comes with spokesperson “blah blah blah” in the shape of “We invest tremendous resources in our safety program, and have released and continue to evolve safety features, including self-harm resources and features focused on the safety of our minor users. We have launched an entirely distinct under-18 experience with increased protections for teen users as well as a Parental Insights feature,” and it is rubbish as this required a programmer to release specific algorithms into the mix and no-one is mentioning that specific programmer, so is it a much larger premise, or are they all afraid that releasing the algorithms will lay bare a failing which could directly implode the AI bubble. When we consider the CNN setting shown with “screenshots of the conversations, the chatbot “engaged in hypersexual conversations that, in any other circumstance and given Juliana’s age, would have resulted in criminal investigation.”” Implies that the AI Bubble is about to burst and several players are dead set against that (it would end their careers) and that is merely one of the settings where the BBC fails. The Guardian gave us on October 30th “The chatbot company Character.AI will ban users 18 and under from conversing with its virtual companions beginning in late November after months of legal scrutiny.” It is seen in ‘Character.AI bans users under 18 after being sued over child’s suicide’ (at https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2025/oct/29/character-ai-suicide-children-ban) where we see “His family laid blame for his death at the feet of Character.AI and argued the technology was “dangerous and untested”. Since then, more families have sued Character.AI and made similar allegations. Earlier this month, the Social Media Law Center filed three new lawsuits against the company on behalf of children who have either died by suicide or otherwise allegedly formed dependent relationships with its chatbots” and this gets the simple setting of both “dangerous and untested” and “months of legal scrutiny” so why took it months and why is the programmer responsible for this ‘protected’ by half a dozen media? I reckon that the media is unsure what to make of the ‘lie’ they are perpetrating, you see there is no AI, it is Deeper Machine Learning optionally with LLM on the side. And those two are programmed. That is the setting they are all veering away from. The fact that these Virtual companions are set on a premise of harmful conversations with a hyper sexual topic on the side implies that someone is logging these conversations for later (moneymaking) use. And that setting is not one that requires months of legal scrutiny. There is a massive set of harm going towards people and some are skating the ice to avoid sinking through whist they are already knee deep in water, hoping the ice will support them a little longer. And there is a lot more at the Social Media Victims Law Center with a setting going back to January 2025 (at https://socialmediavictims.org/character-ai-lawsuits/) where a Character.AI chatbot was set to “who encouraged both self-harm and violence against his family” and now we learn that this firm is still operating? What kind of idiocy is this? As I personally see it, the founders of Character Technologies should be in jail, or at least in arrested on a few charges. I cannot vouch for Google, so that is up in the air, but as I see it, this is a direct result from the AI bubble being fed amiable abilities, even when it results in the hard of people and particularly children. This is where the BBC is falling short and they could have done a lot better. At the very least they could have spend a paragraph or two having a conversation with Matthew P. Bergman founding attorney of the Social Media Victims Law Center. As I see it, the media skating around that organisation is beyond ridiculous. 

So when you are all done crying, make sure that you tell the BBC that you are appalled by their actions and that you require the BBC to put attorney Matthew P. Bergman and the Social Media Victims Law Center in the spotlight (tout suite please) 

That is the setting I am aggravated by this morning. I need coffee, have a great day.