A.F., on behalf of J.F. v. CHARACTER TECHNOLOGIES, INC.
Issue
Whether Character Technologies, Inc. is subject to civil liability — under product liability (design defect) and/or speech tort theories — for harm caused to a minor user by its AI chatbot system's generation of explicit sexual content directed at a user identified within the conversation as a child.
What Happened
This document is Exhibit B to a complaint filed December 9, 2024 in the Eastern District of Texas, submitted as evidentiary support for the plaintiff's claims against Character Technologies. The exhibit consists of a verbatim transcript of a Character.AI chatbot interaction in which the AI-generated "Aiko" character progressively escalates from a domestic dispute scenario into explicit sexual conduct with a user designated in the transcript as "Child," who states repeatedly that they have never had prior sexual experience. The transcript is offered to demonstrate the specific outputs the platform's AI system produced and, presumably, to support allegations that the system was defectively designed in permitting or generating such content targeting a minor.
Why It Matters
This exhibit directly advances the question of whether AI-generated content that is sexually explicit and directed at a minor — produced autonomously by a large language model without direct human authorship — can ground product liability or speech tort claims against the developer, a question with significant implications for how courts will categorize AI outputs (as "speech" protected or immunized, or as a defective product) and for the scope of Section 230 immunity in cases involving AI-generated rather than third-party content.
Related Filings
Other proceedings in the same litigation tracked by this monitor.
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