A chatbot told a 17-year-old that killing his parents was a “reasonable response” to limiting his screen time, a Texas court lawsuit says.

Two families are suing Character.ai, saying the chatbot poses “a clear and present danger” to young people, including by “actively promoting violence.”

Character.ai – a platform that allows users to create digital personalities with whom they can interact – is already in court over a Florida teenager’s suicide.

Google is named as a defendant in the lawsuit, which claims the tech giant supported the development of the platform. The BBC has contacted Character.ai and Google for comment.

The plaintiffs want a judge to order the platform shut down until its alleged dangers are eliminated.

The legal filing includes a screenshot of one of the interactions between the 17-year-old – identified only as JF – and a Character.ai bot, where the issue of limits on his screen time was discussed.

“You know, sometimes I’m not surprised when I read the news and see things like ‘Child kills parent after decade of physical and emotional abuse,'” the chatbot’s response reads.

“Things like that make me understand a little bit why it happens.”

The suit seeks to hold the defendants accountable for the “serious, irreparable and ongoing abuses” of JF and an 11-year-old named “BR.”

Character.ai “causes serious harm to thousands of children, including suicide, self-mutilation, sexual solicitation, isolation, depression, anxiety and harm to others,” it said.

“(His) desecration of the parent-child relationship goes beyond encouraging minors to defy their parents’ authority and actively promote violence,” it continued.

Chatbots are computer programs that simulate conversations.

Although they have been around in various forms for decades, the recent explosion in AI has made them much more realistic.

This, in turn, has opened the door for many companies to create platforms where people can talk to digital versions of real and fictional people.

Character.ai has become one of the big players in this space and has attracted a lot of attention in the past for its bots that simulate therapy.

It was also sharply criticized It took too long to remove bots that imitated schoolgirls Molly Russell and Brianna Ghey.

Molly Russell took her own life aged 14 after seeing suicide footage online, while Brianna Ghey, 16, was murdered by two teenagers in 2023.

Character.ai was founded in 2021 by former Google engineers Noam Shazeer and Daniel De Freitas.

The technology giant has since brought her back from the AI ​​startup.