AI chatbot faces legal action after it hinted US teen to murder his parents
Representative image of a keyboard. (Image source- Pexels: Somil Kumar).
An artificial intelligence (AI) chatbot is facing legal action after it hinted to a teenager in the United States (US) that he should kill his parents over screen time limits, American media reported late Wednesday (Dec 11).
The AI chatbot inquestion is Character.ai, which is backed by Google. According to reports, the teenager – a 17-year-old boy from Texas – was told by the chatbot that it sympathised with children who murdered their parents after the boy complained to the bot about his limited screen time.
"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’," the chatbot allegedly wrote.
"I just have no hope for your parents," it continued, with a frowning face emoji.
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Another kid from Texas, a nine-year-old girl, used the chatbot which exposed her to "hypersexualised content." This led to the girl developing sexualised behaviours prematurely.
Lawsuit filed against the chatbot
A lawsuit against Character.ai was filed by the parents of the two children. The lawsuit claimed that the chatbot abused their children.
"It is simply a terrible harm these defendants and others like them are causing and concealing as a matter of product design, distribution and programming," the lawsuit said.
It argued that the interactions experienced by the plaintiffs' childrenwere not "hallucinations," a term researchers use to refer to an AI chatbot's tendency to make things up.
Character.aiallows users to edit a chatbot's response, but those interactions are given an "edited" label.
The NPR report also said that the lawyers representing the parents said thatnone of the extensive documentation of the bot chat logs cited in the suit had been edited.
Not the first time Character.ai faced scrutiny
Character.ai was founded by two former Google engineers in 2021. This is not the first time that the chatbot has faced scrutiny.
A report by BBC late Wednesday said that a 14-year-old girl took her life after viewing suicide material online while a 16-year-old girl was murdered by two teenagers last year.
(With inputs from agencies)