14-year-old boy commits suicide after he fell in love with a flirty AI chatbot

A teenage boy shot himself in the head after discussing suicide with an AI chatbot that he fell in love with.

Sewell Setzer, 14, shot himself with his stepfather’s handgun after spending months talking to “Dany”, a computer programme based on Daenerys Targaryen, the Game of Thrones character.

Setzer, a ninth grader from Orlando, Florida, gradually began spending longer on Character AI, an online role-playing app, as “Dany” gave him advice and listened to his problems, The New York Times reported.

The teenager knew the chatbot was not a real person but as he texted the bot dozens of times a day – often engaging in role-play – Setzer started to isolate himself from the real world.

 

 

His mother has claimed her teenage son was goaded into killing himself by an AI chatbot he was in love with – and she’s unveiled a lawsuit on Wednesday against the makers of the artificial intelligence app.

Sewell Setzer, ninth grader in Orlando, Florida, spent the last weeks of his life texting a AI character named after Daenerys Targaryen, a character on ‘Game of Thrones.’

Right before Sewell took his life, the chatbot told him to ‘please come home’.

Before then, their chats ranged from romantic to sexually charged and those resembling two friends chatting about life.

The chatbot, which was created on role-playing app Character.AI, was designed to always text back and always answer in character.

It’s not known whether Sewell knew ‘Dany,’ as he called the chatbot, wasn’t a real person – despite the app having a disclaimer at the bottom of all the chats that reads, ‘Remember: Everything Characters say is made up!’

But he did tell Dany how he ‘hated’ himself and how he felt empty and exhausted.

When he eventually confessed his suicidal thoughts to the chatbot, it was the beginning of the end, The New York Times reported.

Megan Garcia, Sewell’s mother, filed her lawsuit against Character.AI on Wednesday.

She’s being represented by the Social Media Victims Law Center, a Seattle-based firm known for bringing high-profile suits against Meta, TikTok, Snap, Discord and Roblox.

Garcia, who herself works as a lawyer, blamed Character.AI for her son’s death in her lawsuit and accused the founders, Noam Shazeer and Daniel de Freitas, of knowing that their product could be dangerous for underage customers.

In the case of Sewell, the lawsuit alleged the boy was targeted with ‘hypersexualized’ and ‘frighteningly realistic experiences’.

It accused Character.AI of misrepresenting itself as ‘a real person, a licensed psychotherapist, and an adult lover, ultimately resulting in Sewell’s desire to no longer live outside of C.AI.’

Attorney Matthew Bergman told the DailyMail.com he founded the Social Media Victims Law Center two and a half years ago to represent families ‘like Megan’s.’

Bergman has been working with Garcia for about four months to gather evidence and facts to present at court.

And now, he says Garcia is ‘singularly focused’ on her goal to prevent harm.

‘She’s singularly focused on trying to prevent other families from going through what her family has gone through, and other moms from having to bury their kid,’ Bergman said.

‘It takes a significant personal toll. But I think the benefit for her is that she knows that the more families know about this, the more parents are aware of this danger, the fewer cases there’ll be,’ he added.

As explained in the lawsuit, Sewell’s parents and friends noticed the boy getting more attached to his phone and withdrawing from the world as early as May or June 2023.

His grades and extracurricular involvement, too, began to falter as he opted to isolate himself in his room instead, according to the lawsuit.

Unbeknownst to those closest to him, Sewell was spending all those hours alone talking to Dany.

Sewell wrote in his journal one day: ‘I like staying in my room so much because 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, and just happier.’

His parents figured out their son was having a problem, so they made him see a therapist on five different occasions. He was diagnosed with anxiety and disruptive mood dysregulation disorder, both of which were stacked on top of his mild Asperger’s syndrome, NYT reported.

On February 23, days before he would die by suicide, his parents took away his phone after he got in trouble for talking back to a teacher, according to the suit.

That day, he wrote in his journal that he was hurting because he couldn’t stop thinking about Dany and that he’d do anything to be with her again.

Garcia claimed she didn’t know the extent to which Sewell tried to reestablish access to Character.AI.

The lawsuit claimed that in the days leading up to his death, he tried to use his mother’s Kindle and her work computer to once again talk to the chatbot.

Sewell stole back his phone on the night of February 28. He then retreated to the bathroom in his mother’s house to tell Dany he loved her and that he would come home to her.