What Can We Do About Abusive Chatbots? With Meetali Jain and Camille Carlton

CW: This episode features discussion of suicide and sexual abuse. In the last episode, we had the journalist Laurie Segall on to talk about the tragic story of Sewell Setzer, a 14 year old boy who took his own life after months of abuse and manipulation by an AI companion from the company Character.ai. The question now is: what's next?Megan has filed a major new lawsuit against Character.ai in Florida, which could force the company–and potentially the entire AI industry–to change its harmful business practices. So today on the show, we have Meetali Jain, director of the Tech Justice Law Project and one of the lead lawyers in Megan's case against Character.ai. Meetali breaks down the details of the case, the complex legal questions under consideration, and how this could be the first step toward systemic change. Also joining is Camille Carlton, CHT’s Policy Director.RECOMMENDED MEDIAFurther reading on Sewell’s storyLaurie Segall’s interview with Megan GarciaThe full complaint filed by Megan against Character.AIFurther reading on suicide bots Further reading on Noam Shazier and Daniel De Frietas’ relationship with Google The CHT Framework for Incentivizing Responsible Artificial Intelligence Development and UseOrganizations mentioned: The Tech Justice Law ProjectThe Social Media Victims Law CenterMothers Against Media AddictionParents SOSParents TogetherCommon Sense MediaRECOMMENDED YUA EPISODESWhen the "Person" Abusing Your Child is a Chatbot: The Tragic Story of Sewell SetzerJonathan Haidt On How to Solve the Teen Mental Health CrisisAI Is Moving Fast. We Need Laws that Will Too.Corrections: Meetali referred to certain chatbot apps as banning users under 18, however the settings for the major app stores ban users that are under 17, not under 18.Meetali referred to Section 230 as providing “full scope immunity” to internet companies, however Congress has passed subsequent laws that have made carve outs for that immunity for criminal acts such as sex trafficking and intellectual property theft.Your Undivided Attention is produced by the Center for Humane Technology. Follow us on X.  Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.