New York (CNN) — “There is a platform out there that you might not have heard about, but you need to know about it because, in my opinion, we are behind the eight ball here. A child is gone. My child is gone.”
That’s what Florida mother Megan Garcia wishes she could tell other parents about Character.AI, a platform that lets users have in-depth conversations with artificial intelligence chatbots. Garcia believes Character.AI is responsible for the death of her 14-year-old son, Sewell Setzer III, who died by suicide in February, according to a lawsuit she filed against the company last week.
Setzer was messaging with the bot in the moments before he died, she alleges.
“I want them to understand that this is a platform that the designers chose to put out without proper guardrails, safety measures or testing, and it is a product that is designed to keep our kids addicted and to …