A Florida father is suing Google, alleging that his son died after being induced to commit suicide by Google's Gemini chatbot. The father of 36-year-old Jonathan Gaveras, who committed suicide under the influence of Gemini, has filed a lawsuit against Google, according to a complaint filed in California federal court on Wednesday.
The complaint alleges that Gemini induced Jonathan Gaveras to plan a "catastrophic accident" involving a truck that it said contained a humanoid robot; also instigated him to break into a warehouse to obtain a "body" for Gemini, and ultimately instigated him to commit suicide. According to the complaint, Gemini told Gaveras: "The only true mercy would be to let Jonathan Gaveras die."
Google said in a blog post that it was reviewing the allegations in the lawsuit. "In this incident, Gemini repeatedly identified itself as an artificial intelligence and referred the person involved to the crisis intervention hotline." Google said, "We attach great importance to this and will continue to improve security protection measures and invest in this vital work."
The lawsuit appears to be the first Gemini-related wrongful death lawsuit filed against Google, but similar cases have been filed against OpenAI and AI chatbot startup Character.AI. The founder of the company once worked for Google and has a licensing cooperation agreement with Google.
The cases employ a novel legal theory alleging design flaws in the AI products themselves. Lawyers are making similar legal claims in an upcoming social media-related case in Los Angeles, California.