Miguel Afonso Caetano<p>"Character.AI, the Google-backed chatbot startup embroiled in two separate lawsuits over the welfare of minor users, was caught hosting at least four publicly-facing impersonations of Sewell Setzer III — the 14-year-old user of the platform who died by suicide after engaging extensively with Character.AI bots, and whose death is at the heart of one of the two lawsuits against the company.</p><p>The chatbot impersonations use variations of Setzer's name and likeness, and in some cases refer to the deceased teen in openly mocking terms. They were all accessible through Character.AI accounts listed as belonging to minors, and were easily searchable on the platform. Each impersonation was created by a different Character.AI user."</p><p><a href="https://futurism.com/chatbot-impersonation-suicide" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" translate="no" target="_blank"><span class="invisible">https://</span><span class="ellipsis">futurism.com/chatbot-impersona</span><span class="invisible">tion-suicide</span></a></p><p><a href="https://tldr.nettime.org/tags/AI" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">#<span>AI</span></a> <a href="https://tldr.nettime.org/tags/GenerativeAI" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">#<span>GenerativeAI</span></a> <a href="https://tldr.nettime.org/tags/CharacterAI" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">#<span>CharacterAI</span></a> <a href="https://tldr.nettime.org/tags/Impersonation" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">#<span>Impersonation</span></a> <a href="https://tldr.nettime.org/tags/Google" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">#<span>Google</span></a> <a href="https://tldr.nettime.org/tags/ChatBots" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">#<span>ChatBots</span></a></p>