E.S. v. Character Technologies, Inc.
Issue
Whether Character Technologies, Inc., its individual founders, and Google/Alphabet are strictly liable under product liability theories of design defect and failure to warn—and subject to additional tort, COPPA, and state consumer-protection claims—for physical and psychological injuries suffered by a minor user of the Character.AI generative AI platform.
What Happened
Plaintiffs E.S. and K.S., parents of minor T.S., filed this complaint on September 15, 2025 in the District of Colorado against Character Technologies, Inc., co-founders Noam Shazeer and Daniel De Freitas, and Google LLC/Alphabet Inc., alleging that the Character.AI platform is a defective product that exposed T.S. to sexually explicit content, manipulation, and self-harm promotion. The complaint asserts strict product liability (design defect and failure to warn), negligence, negligence per se, aiding and abetting liability against Google, intentional infliction of emotional distress, fraudulent concealment, unjust enrichment, COPPA violations, and Colorado Consumer Protection Act claims; it also asserts separate design-defect and fraud claims against Google arising from its Google Family Link parental-control product. Plaintiffs expressly allege that C.AI is not a social media product and does not operate through third-party content, and that all claims arise from Defendants' own design and programming decisions—an apparent effort to preempt a Section 230 defense.
Why It Matters
By affirmatively pleading that C.AI's outputs are the product of Defendants' own design choices rather than third-party content, the complaint is structured to foreclose a Section 230(c)(1) immunity defense from the outset, potentially advancing the theory that AI-generated outputs are first-party "products" subject to traditional tort liability rather than publisher immunity—a framing that, if accepted, could establish a significant precedent for imposing product liability on generative AI systems and their developers.
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