Character.ai files for bankruptcy following lawsuits alleging ties to teen suicides

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Artificial intelligence chat startup Character.ai — which has faced a wave of claims that its app contributed to mental health issues and suicides among teens — has filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy.

Character.ai lets users message with a range of chatbots, often modeled after celebrities and fictional characters, or create their own. Its bots often respond with human-like conversational cues, adding references to facial expressions or gestures into their replies.

The company said it plans to seek a court-supervised sale by the end of the year in hopes of keeping the platform running long-term.

Disney has already set itself up as a bidder for the company’s assets, agreeing to pay $20 million for some of the company’s intellectual property and to provide transition services via former Character.ai employees it has hired. The deal will allow Character.ai to keep its platform operational at least during the bankruptcy process. Karandeep Anand, who was brought on as Character.ai’s CEO last year to help improve its reputation on safety, joined Disney as Chief Technology Officer last month.

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Former Google AI staffers Noam Shazeer and Daniel de Freitas launched Character.ai in 2021. Both founders have since returned to Google. Within just over a year, the company said it had reached a $1 billion valuation, following a $150 million funding round.

Character.ai has between $50 million and $100 million in assets, according to its bankruptcy filling.

In 2024, amid growing concerns about human dependance on AI chatbots, Florida mother Megan Garcia sued Character.ai , alleging that the platform was responsible for the suicide death of her 14-year-old son Sewell Setzer III. Other families filed a string of additional lawsuits , accusing the platform of providing sexual content to their children or encouraging suicide , self-harm or violence. Character.ai agreed to settle five cases, including Garcia’s, earlier this year.

Matthew Bergman, founder of the Social Media Victims Law Center, which represents several of the families who sued Character.a i, declined to comment on the bankruptcy filing.

Mom describes dark exchange son had with bot

Character.ai made a number of safety changes in the wake of the lawsuits, including adding pop-ups directing users to mental health resources. It also blocked users under 18 from engaging in back-and-forth conversations with bots, instead allowing them only to create one-time stories or videos.

The company also faced a probe into its safety practices by Senate Democrats last year, along with other AI “companion” apps. Character.ai was also in competition with chatbots from much larger players, such as ChatGPT and Google’s Gemini.

When Anand took over as CEO of the then-70-person company last year, he told CNN he saw a future for the company in interactive, personalized AI entertainment — where users could co-create stories and conversations with AI characters for fun. He told CNN at the time that the company was “doubling down on entertainment, doubling down on trust and safety.”

Character.ai says that if a sale is not completed, the platform will be “wound down.”

“Over the past year, Character.ai has taken meaningful steps to sustain and improve its business in the face of significant legal, regulatory, and operational headwinds,” Colin Adams, CEO of Character.AI , said in a statement, adding that the company’s board reviewed its options and “determined that this court-supervised sale process provides the Company with the best opportunity to maximize value for all stakeholders.”

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人工智能聊天初创公司 Character.ai 曾面临大量指控，称其应用程序导致青少年心理健康问题和自杀事件，该公司已申请破产保护（第 11 章）。

Character.ai 允许用户与各种聊天机器人进行交流，这些机器人通常以名人或虚构人物为原型，用户也可以创建自己的聊天机器人。其机器人通常会以类似人类的对话方式进行回应，并在回复中加入面部表情或手势等元素。

该公司表示，计划在年底前寻求法院监督下的出售，以期使该平台能够长期运营。

迪士尼已确定竞购Character.ai的资产，同意支付2000万美元收购该公司部分知识产权，并通过其聘请的前Character.ai员工提供过渡服务。该交易将使Character.ai的平台至少在破产程序期间得以继续运营。去年被任命为Character.ai首席执行官的Karandeep Anand，旨在提升公司在安全方面的声誉，已于上个月加入迪士尼担任首席技术官。

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谷歌人工智能前员工诺姆·沙泽尔和丹尼尔·德·弗雷塔斯于2021年创立了Character.ai。两位创始人之后都重返谷歌。短短一年多时间，该公司在完成1.5亿美元的融资后，估值就达到了10亿美元。

根据 Character.ai 提交的破产申请文件，该公司拥有 5000 万美元至 1 亿美元的资产。

2024年，随着人们对人工智能聊天机器人的依赖日益担忧，佛罗里达州一位名叫梅根·加西亚的母亲起诉了Character.ai平台，指控该平台导致她14岁的儿子塞维尔·塞策三世自杀身亡。其他一些家庭也提起了一系列诉讼，指控该平台向他们的孩子提供色情内容，或鼓励自杀、自残或暴力行为。今年早些时候，Character.ai同意与包括加西亚在内的五起案件达成和解。

代表起诉 Character.ai 的几名家庭的社交媒体受害者法律中心创始人马修·伯格曼拒绝就破产申请发表评论。

母亲描述了儿子与机器人之间一段黑暗的对话。

在诉讼之后，Character.ai 做出了一系列安全改进，包括增加弹出窗口引导用户获取心理健康资源。此外，它还禁止 18 岁以下的用户与机器人进行双向对话，只允许他们创建一次性故事或视频。

去年，该公司与其他人工智能“伴侣”应用一样，也面临着参议院民主党人对其安全措施的调查。此外，Character.ai 还与 ChatGPT 和谷歌的 Gemini 等规模更大的聊天机器人公司展开竞争。

去年，阿南德接任这家当时拥有70名员工的公司首席执行官时，他告诉CNN，他认为公司未来发展的方向是互动式、个性化的AI娱乐——用户可以与AI角色共同创作故事和对话，从中获得乐趣。他当时告诉CNN，公司正在“加倍投入娱乐，加倍投入信任和安全”。

Character.ai 表示，如果交易未能完成，该平台将“停止运营”。

Character.AI 首席执行官 Colin Adams 在一份声明中表示：“过去一年，面对重大的法律、监管和运营方面的不利因素，Character.ai 采取了切实有效的措施来维持和改善其业务。”他还补充说，公司董事会审查了各种方案，并“认定这一由法院监督的出售程序为公司提供了最大限度提升所有利益相关者价值的最佳机会”。