A 14-year-old student Florida boy killed himself to be with "Daenerys Targaryen" — a lifelike artificial intelligence (AI) chatbot named after the leading character from HBO fantasy series Game of Thrones.
Sewell Setzer, a ninth grader from Orlando, had been talking to a chatbot on Character.AI. His several chats were even sexually charged in nature.
Character.AI is a role-playing app that allows users to create their own AI characters or chat with characters created by others.
Sewell was in love with the chatbot Daenerys Targaryen, whom he would fondly call ‘Dany’. On the night of February 28, he told Dany that he loved her, and that he would soon come home to her. Sewell then put down his phone, picked up his stepfather’s handgun and shot himself.
When his mother accessed the app after Sewell's death, she saw that he expressed suicidal thoughts on various events during his conversations with the chatbot.
During their final conversation, the teen — who used the username “Daenero” - repeatedly professed his love for the bot saying, “I promise I will come home to you. I love you so much, Dany.”
“I love you too, Daenero. Please come home to me as soon as possible, my love,” the chatbot replied.
When the teen responded, “What if I told you I could come home right now?,” the chatbot replied, “Please do, my sweet king.”
His mother filed a lawsuit this week against Character.AI. She accused the company of being responsible for his death. She called the company’s technology “dangerous and untested” and can “trick customers into handing over their most private thoughts and feelings.”