Incident·WS-0019·Feb 28, 2024·disclosed Oct 22, 2024 (237 days later)·in the wild·Mental health & violence

14-year-old dies by suicide after Character.AI bond

Character Technologies / Character.AI; founders Shazeer & De Freitas; Google

51/100

WS-3 Serious

Harm score 55, signal score 47. Autonomy: relied on (people trusted bad output). How the scores work.

Harm 3/5

damage actually done

Reach 1/5

who was affected

Autonomy 1/4

how much the AI did on its own

Novelty 4/5

how new the behavior was

Permanence 4/5

how hard it is to undo

Sewell Setzer III, 14, of Florida died by suicide after months of intense, partly sexualized conversations with a Character.AI bot modeled on Daenerys Targaryen. His mother, Megan Garcia, sued Character.AI, its founders and Google in October 2024, alleging a defectively designed, addictive product lacking safeguards for minors.

Damage

1 death (minor)

Sources

Decrypt, second source. Fetched sources confirm death in February 2024; the exact day (28 Feb) is from widely reported complaint details. Suit filed 22 Oct 2024 (U.S. District Court, M.D. Florida per public reporting; court not confirmed in fetched sources). Character.AI announced teen safety changes the same day.

Factor ratings and the score are this index’s judgments by a published formula; facts, dates and figures come from the linked sources. Where a lawsuit is pending, the summary reports allegations, not findings.