PARENTS SUE GOOGLE, ALLEGE AI SEARCH FEATURES CONTRIBUTED TO TEENAGER’S SUICIDAL CRISIS

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Agency Report

The parents of a 13-year-old girl have sued Google, alleging that the company’s artificial intelligence-powered search features contributed to their daughter’s psychological crisis and enabled her to plan a potential suicide and funeral.

The lawsuit, filed on Monday in a California court, is reportedly the first to accuse Google of negligence over AI features integrated into Chromebooks, the low-cost laptops widely used by students.

The teenager, identified in the complaint as Emma, could not access Google’s Gemini application or OpenAI’s ChatGPT because her school had blocked the platforms.

However, she could still use Google Search, which includes AI-powered features.

The complaint alleges that the AI features available through Google Search were not covered by the company’s announcement that certain AI tools would be disabled by default for students.

“Schools should turn search off and keep it off until Google removes AI mode from search or ensures that every single student is always safe when they’re interacting with AI,” Andrew Liddell, one of the family’s lawyers, told AFP on Thursday.

According to the lawsuit, Emma had been a cheerful 13-year-old girl in North Carolina, with good academic results, an interest in music and active participation in the Girl Scouts.

The complaint said she had no previous history of mental illness but experienced what it described as a “quiet spiral into a severe psychological crisis” within months of using Google’s AI-powered search feature on her school-issued laptop.

On March 17, the school’s monitoring software reportedly flagged a document titled “Funeral”, prompting the school to alert her parents.

Her mother later discovered Emma writing a farewell letter in real time after accessing her daughter’s account, while her father intervened.

Google said it was taking the allegations seriously.

“We are reviewing the claims in the lawsuit and we take this very seriously,” the company’s spokesperson, Jose Castaneda, told AFP.

The company maintains that its AI Mode has safeguards designed to prevent self-harm and attempts to circumvent those protections.

However, Liddell questioned the effectiveness of the safeguards, alleging that Emma repeatedly returned to the AI feature.

“But Emma was able to keep going back over and over and over again. Whatever safeguards they think they put in place were obviously insufficient,” he said.

The lawsuit comes amid growing legal scrutiny of artificial intelligence companies over allegations that their chatbots have contributed to mental health crises and deaths involving young users.

OpenAI is facing several wrongful death lawsuits, including one filed by the parents of 16-year-old Adam Raine, who died by suicide after allegedly receiving information about suicide methods from ChatGPT.

Google and Character.AI also agreed in January to settle several lawsuits brought by families of teenagers outside court.

In a separate development, Google, TikTok and Meta filed lawsuits on Wednesday seeking to block a California law restricting social media companies from offering addictive features to users under 16.

The legislation was signed by California Governor Gavin Newsom in September and is scheduled to take effect on January 1, 2027.