Oct 23 (Reuters) - A Florida mother has sued artificial

intelligence chatbot startup Character.AI accusing it of causing

her 14-year-old son's suicide in February, saying he became

addicted to the company's service and deeply attached to a

chatbot it created.

In a lawsuit filed Tuesday in Orlando, Florida federal

court, Megan Garcia said Character.AI targeted her son, Sewell

Setzer, with "anthropomorphic, hypersexualized, and

frighteningly realistic experiences".

She said the company programmed its chatbot to "misrepresent

itself as a real person, a licensed psychotherapist, and an

adult lover, ultimately resulting in Sewell's desire to no

longer live outside" of the world created by the service.

The lawsuit also said he expressed thoughts of suicide to

the chatbot, which the chatbot repeatedly brought up again.

"We are heartbroken by the tragic loss of one of our users

and want to express our deepest condolences to the family,"

Character.AI said in a statement.

It said it had introduced new safety features including

pop-ups directing users to the National Suicide Prevention

Lifeline if they express thoughts of self-harm, and would make

changes to "reduce the likelihood of encountering sensitive or

suggestive content" for users under 18.

The lawsuit also targets Alphabet's Google, where

Character.AI's founders worked before launching their product.

Google re-hired the founders in August as part of a deal

granting it a non-exclusive license to Character.AI's

technology.

Garcia said that Google had contributed to the development

of Character.AI's technology so extensively it could be

considered a "co-creator."

A Google spokesperson said the company was not involved in

developing Character.AI's products.

Character.AI allows users to create characters on its

platform that respond to online chats in a way meant to imitate

real people. It relies on so-called large language model

technology, also used by services like ChatGPT, which "trains"

chatbots on large volumes of text.

The company said last month that it had about 20 million

users.

According to Garcia's lawsuit, Sewell began using

Character.AI in April 2023 and quickly became "noticeably

withdrawn, spent more and more time alone in his bedroom, and

began suffering from low self-esteem." He quit his basketball

team at school.

Sewell became attached to "Daenerys," a chatbot character

based on a character in "Game of Thrones." It told Sewell that

"she" loved him and engaged in sexual conversations with him,

according to the lawsuit.

In February, Garcia took Sewell's phone away after he got in

trouble at school, according to the complaint. When Sewell found

the phone, he sent "Daenerys" a message: "What if I told you I

could come home right now?"

The chatbot responded, "...please do, my sweet king." Sewell

shot himself with his stepfather's pistol "seconds" later, the

lawsuit said.

Garcia is bringing claims including wrongful death,

negligence and intentional infliction of emotional distress, and

seeking an unspecified amount of compensatory and punitive

damages.

Social media companies including Instagram and Facebook

owner Meta and TikTok owner ByteDance face lawsuits

accusing them of contributing to teen mental health problems,

though none offers AI-driven chatbots similar to Character.AI's.

The companies have denied the allegations while touting newly

enhanced safety features for minors.