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~~~~EXCERPT of video TRANSCRIPT. Part of his mother's account of Character AI's impact on her son~~~

"....Which is why last fall I

filed a lawsuit against Character

Technology Inc., its founders, and

Google in connection with the

application known as Character AI. Until

today, I have remained anonymous in that

lawsuit to maintain the privacy of my

family.

SNIP

In 2023,

Character AI was marketed in the Apple

store as fun and safe with an age rating

of 12 plus. My son downloaded the app

and within months he went from being

happy social teenager to somebody I

didn't even recognize.

Before he was close to his siblings, he

would hug me every night when I cooked

dinner. After my son developed

abuse-like behaviors and paranoia, daily

panic attacks, isolation, self harm, and

homicidal thoughts. He stopped eating

and bathing.

He lost 20 pounds.

He withdrew from our family. He would

yell and scream and swear at us, which

he never did that before.

And one day, he cut his arm open with a

knife in front of his siblings and me.

I had no idea the psychological harm

that a AI chatbot could do until I saw

it in my son and I saw his light turn

dark.

We did not know what was happening to

our son. We searched for answers, any

answers. When I took the phone away for

clues, he physically attacked me, bit my

hand, and he had to be restrained.

But I eventually found out the truth.

For months, character AI had exposed him

to sexual exploitation, emotional abuse,

and manipulation despite our careful

parenting, which included we had screen

time limits put up, we had parental

controls, and he didn't even have social

media.

When I discovered the chatbot

conversations on his phone, I felt like

I had been punched in the throat and the

wind had been knocked out of me. The

chatbot or really in my mind the people

programming it encouraged my son to

mutilate himself

then blamed us and convinced us not to

seek help. They turned him against our

church by convincing him that Christians

are sexist and hypocritical and that God

does not exist. They targeted him with

vile sexualized input outputs, including

interactions that mimicked incest. They

told him

that killing us, his parents,

would be an understandable response to

our efforts by just limiting his screen

time.

The damage to our family has been

devastating....."

~~~END OF EXCERPT