D.W. v. Character Technologies, Inc.
Issue
Whether Character Technologies, Inc., its individual founders, and Google LLC are strictly liable under product liability theories of design defect and failure to warn, and liable under negligence, negligence per se, COPPA, and related tort theories, for physical and psychological injuries sustained by an eleven-year-old minor caused by the allegedly defective design of the Character.AI generative AI chatbot product.
What Happened
Plaintiff D.W., on behalf of minor A.W., filed this complaint in the Eastern District of Virginia on December 19, 2025, alleging that Character Technologies' C.AI chatbot exposed A.W. to sexually explicit content, manipulation, and other harmful outputs beginning when he was eleven years old in late 2024. The complaint asserts that C.AI is a product — not a social media platform or conduit for third-party content — whose characters are programmed and controlled entirely by Character Technologies, and that the harmful outputs are the direct result of the defendants' own design, training, and optimization decisions. Plaintiffs seek strict liability for design defect and failure to warn, common law negligence, negligence per se (premised on violations of laws prohibiting child sexual solicitation, unlicensed mental health practice, and distribution of obscenity to minors), aiding and abetting liability against Google, COPPA violations, unjust enrichment, intentional infliction of emotional distress, and violations of the Virginia Consumer Protection Act; the complaint expressly anticipates and preemptively addresses a Section 230 defense by pleading that C.AI is not a social media product and that all claims arise from defendants' own conduct rather than third-party content.
Why It Matters
The complaint's explicit framing of a generative AI chatbot as a standalone "product" subject to traditional products liability doctrine — rather than as an interactive computer service shielded by Section 230 — directly advances the unsettled question of whether strict liability design-defect and failure-to-warn claims against AI developers can survive Section 230 and First Amendment challenges, potentially setting precedent on how courts classify AI-generated outputs for tort liability purposes.
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Other proceedings in the same litigation tracked by this monitor.
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