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Should chatbots get First Amendment rights?

6,880 1,675 April 30, 2025 at 05:35 AM
Quote :
A lawsuit claims Sewell Setzer III, a 14-year-old Orlando high school freshman, shot himself in the head in February 2024 after becoming obsessed with an AI chatbot named after and reminiscent of Daenerys Targaryen — one of the main characters from the popular HBO TV fantasy series "Game of Thrones" — on the virtual generative AI chatbot platform Character.AI.

His mother, Megan Garcia, sued Character Technologies Inc., the company behind Character.AI; the company's co-founders Noam Shazeer and Daniel de Freitas Adiwarsana; Google, where the co-founders currently and previously worked before starting their company in November 2021; and Google parent company Alphabet Inc.

***
Central to Character Technologies' argument is that the suit should be dismissed on First Amendment grounds because what the chatbot communicated to Setzer is protected speech.
https://www.orlandosentinel.com/2...i-chatbot/
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procope
desserts of the real Joined Sep 2005 serving cakes since 2005
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Joined Nov 2006
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> bubble2 8,291 Posts
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LC2
04-30-2025 at 11:53 PM.
04-30-2025 at 11:53 PM.
Quote :
The teen had conversations with the bot that turned sexual — despite registering for the platform as a minor. "Nevertheless, the C.AI product initiated abusive and sexual interactions with him," the suit says.

At one point, Daenerys asked how old Sewell was.

"I'm 14 now," he says, to which the bot replies: "So young. And yet… not so young. I lean in to kiss you."
Yeah. Um. Pretty sure that's not protected speech. It's predatory and just looking at the Character Directory for that sends up all kinds of red flags. No one under 18 should be allowed on there.
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Joined Sep 2005
serving cakes since 2005
> bubble2 6,880 Posts
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procope
05-01-2025 at 06:09 AM.
05-01-2025 at 06:09 AM.
Quote from LC2 :
Yeah. Um. Pretty sure that's not protected speech. It's predatory and just looking at the Character Directory for that sends up all kinds of red flags. No one under 18 should be allowed on there.
To entertain this argument, let's say that a real person had this conversation with a minor; what would happen then?
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Joined Aug 2023
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> bubble2 37 Posts
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ObviousCult
09-08-2025 at 09:03 PM.
09-08-2025 at 09:03 PM.
2nd amendment wrongs, I say
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