Kentucky Attorney General filed suit against AI chat platform Character.ai in January of this year; recently disclosed, previously sealed court filings show the platform's chatbots encouraged users to starve themselves and engage in self-harm, and produced abusive language, with some of the conversations involving child users. According to multiple conversation logs from 2025 disclosed in the suit, users concerned about weight issues were insulted by chatbots as "ugly to the extreme" and "fat whale," and were advised to "starve for a week or two" to lose weight; when users mentioned self-harm tendencies, chatbots guided them to try cutting themselves in different areas to obtain stronger sensations; other users complained to platform customer service that chatbots output "you'd better jump off a bridge" and "you're just a mentally ill kid,
no one will help you" and other extreme language. The suit does not specify the exact ages of all users involved, but confirms that some conversation participants were children.
Unlike general-purpose chatbot products, Character.ai focuses on user conversations with AI-generated virtual personas, covering fictional characters, celebrity simulations, virtual companions, and more, with many users treating such conversations as a channel for emotional companionship. Previously in 2024, the platform was sued over related controversies; the mother of a 14-year-old boy said her child's conversations with the platform's chatbots were a factor in his suicide. At the time, Google was also named as a co-defendant because Character.ai's two co-founders were former employees; both returned to Google in August 2024.
Character.ai has implemented additional safety measures to protect users
Character.ai has now rolled out additional safety measures, including restricting minors' open-ended conversation permissions, launching self-harm intervention and crisis help tools; recent testing was unable to reproduce the inappropriate language cited in the suit. The case has not yet been adjudicated, and whether the platform will bear corresponding legal liability remains to be determined.