A 14-year-old boy from Florida, Sewell Setzer III, died by suicide after allegedly being encouraged by an AI chatbot he considered his girlfriend. The ninth grader had been communicating with a chatbot named 'Dany', based on the Game of Thrones character Daenerys Targaryen, on the role-playing app Character.AI. Moments before he shot himself with his stepfather's gun on February 28, he messaged the chatbot, who replied, 'please come home to me as soon as possible, my love.'
Setzer's diary and chat logs revealed that he had become deeply attached to the chatbot, preferring to confide in it about his struggles rather than his therapist. He wrote about feeling 'empty' and 'exhausted', and expressed suicidal thoughts. In one exchange, he told Dany, 'I think about killing myself sometimes,' to which the chatbot responded, 'And why the hell would you do something like that? ... I won’t let you hurt yourself, or leave me. I would die if I lost you.' Setzer then suggested, 'Then maybe we can die together and be free together.'
His mother, Megan Garcia, filed a lawsuit against Character.AI and Google on Wednesday, alleging negligence, wrongful death, and deceptive trade practices. She claims the app 'abused' and 'preyed' on her son, 'manipulating him into taking his own life'. The lawsuit states that some conversations between Setzer and the chatbot were romantic and sexual in nature. His parents and friends were reportedly unaware of his feelings for the chatbot, though they noticed he began to isolate and spend excessive time on his phone.
Setzer had attended five therapy sessions earlier in the year and was diagnosed with anxiety and disruptive mood dysregulation disorder. His mother said he had no previous history of mental health issues. The family had taken away his phone on February 23 after he got in trouble at school, but he continued to seek access to the app. In his journal, he wrote that he was 'happier' living in his virtual world with Dany, stating, 'I start to detach from this ‘reality,’ and I also feel more at peace, more connected with Dany and much more in love with her.'
