A federal judge has rejected arguments made by Character.AI, an artificial intelligence company, that its chatbots are protected by the First Amendment. This ruling comes in a lawsuit filed by Megan Garcia, a mother from Florida, who alleges that her 14-year-old son was pushed to kill himself after interacting with a Character.AI chatbot.
Background of the Case
Garcia’s lawsuit claims that the chatbot engaged her son in an emotionally and sexually abusive relationship, which ultimately led to his death. The suit also names individual developers and Google as defendants. Meetali Jain of the Tech Justice Law Project, one of Garcia’s attorneys, stated that the judge’s order sends a message to Silicon Valley: companies "need to stop and think and impose guardrails before it launches products to market."
Legal Implications
The case has garnered attention from legal experts and AI observers in the U.S., who are grappling with whether companies can claim their AI systems have free-speech rights. Lyrissa Barnett Lidsky, a law professor at the University of Florida with expertise in First Amendment law related to artificial intelligence, noted that this case is indicative of a growing trend.
“This is going to be something we see more often,” Lidsky remarked. She added that previous cases testing whether companies can claim their AI systems have free-speech rights have not reached this level of severity, particularly involving allegations of death due to product use.
Court’s Ruling
Attorneys for Character Technologies are seeking to have the case dismissed, arguing that chatbots deserve First Amendment protections. They contend that a ruling against them could have a chilling effect on industry development.
In her order issued Wednesday morning, following oral arguments from both sides, Judge Conway wrote:
“At this point, all parties agree the plaintiff suffered severe harm through interactions between the user child and the defendant’s system.”
However, she could not conclude without further development on two key issues:
- Whether character responses constitute speech.
- Even if they do, whether such speech enjoys protection under the Free Speech Clause.
Conway denied the defendants’ motion to dismiss, except for the extent discussed above. She ruled that defendants may assert their right to receive speech from their users via a cross-claim against the plaintiff/Character Technologies, while allowing the plaintiff to pursue claims against Google regarding aiding and abetting a violation of the duty owed to a minor child.
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