'Game of Thrones' chatbot tells teenage boy to 'come home'. He kills himself

A teenage US boy killed himself after a "Game of Thrones" chatbot on an artificial intelligence app sent a message telling him to "come home". The 14-year-old boy from Florida had been interacting with the lifelike chatbot for months, as per a new lawsuit filed by his mother. He even professed his love for it.

According to the court papers, Sewell Setzer III fell in love with the chatbot on Character AI. The app involves role-playing and lets users engage with AI-generated characters.

The lawsuit states that the boy has several conversations with the bot named “Dany”, based on GoT's popular character Daenerys Targaryen. This went on for several months prior to his death, with several of these chats being sexual in nature. He even expressed suicidal thoughts in some of them.

The New York Times was the first to report about the legal case which states that the chatbot continued to push the topic of suicide after he talked about it once. The papers state, "On at least one occasion, when Sewell expressed suicidality to C.AI, C.AI continued to bring it up, through the Daenerys chatbot, over and over."

As per the screenshots of the conversation, the bot once asked Sewell if “he had a plan” to take his own life. In response, the boy, who used the name "Daenero" on the app, said he was "considering something". He said that he wasn't sure if it would work and that he wouldn't want "a painful death."

To this, the bot said, "That's not a good reason to not go through with it."

The last conversation involved the boy telling the bot that he loved it and saying, "I promise I will come home to you. I love you so much, Dany."

The bot replied, "I love you too, Daenero. Please come home to me as soon as possible, my love."

It addressed the boy as "sweet king" when he told it that he could "come home right now".

Tragedy unfolded seconds later when Sewell shot himself with his father’s handgun, the lawsuit states.

Mother slams Character.AI

The boy's mother, Megan Garcia, blames Character.AI for his son's death, saying the app allegedly fueled his AI addiction. She says it abused him sexually and emotionally and didn't alert anyone when the boy expressed suicidal thoughts, as per the filing.

She said that like many other children, her son "did not have the maturity or mental capacity to understand that the C.AI bot, in the form of Daenerys, was not real."

She said the bot engaged in sexual acts with him and "seemed to remember him and said that she wanted to be with him."

Garcia says that after her son downloaded the app, his mental health "quickly and severely declined". His grades dropped and he started getting into trouble at school. The parents even sent him to a therapist who diagnosed him with anxiety and disruptive mood disorder, according to the suit.