PARENTS AI SAFETY CONCERNS

A student made plans to end her life after chatting with Google’s artificial intelligence, a new lawsuit claims, amid mounting concerns about online harms to children.

After chatting for months with Google’s artificial intelligence on a school-issued Chromebook laptop, a 13-year-old student made plans to end her life, according to a lawsuit filed in California Superior Court on Monday, the latest in a wave of litigation over Big Tech’s effects on young people.

The lawsuit, which calls the girl Emma, said her parents first learned she had access to Google’s A.I. in mid-March after her school sent a message warning she was in “imminent danger” of self-harm. Emma’s mother logged into the teenager’s school Google account and found her daughter composing a suicide note on Google Docs, the complaint said. Her parents, called John and Jane Doe in the lawsuit, immediately took Emma for an emergency psychiatric evaluation. She now goes to therapy every week.

Emma, a seventh grader in Charlotte, N.C., had grown convinced she had multiple mental health disorders following interactions with A.I. Mode, a chatbot-like feature on Google Search, the complaint said. She also searched for “what is a suicide note,” and made comments like “I am planning my own funeral” to the A.I., the complaint said.

The lawsuit is likely the first to claim that Google “hastily integrated” A.I. features into company apps used on K-12 Chromebooks, Google-powered laptops provided to millions of children by U.S. school districts, while failing to notify parents of potential risks. The claims add to mounting public concern that Silicon Valley has hooked young people on social media apps, video games and A.I. chatbots, putting children in harm’s way.

José Castañeda, a Google spokesman, said the company had worked extensively with health experts to build features to help young people find emergency resources. The company is reviewing the claims in the lawsuit.

“For years, we’ve shown hotline information directly in search when someone may be experiencing a mental health crisis,” he said in a statement. “We’ve built those same protections into search A.I. features, connecting people with real-world support.”

- Author: Natasha Singer, The New York Times

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