WASHINGTON, D.C.: A Florida mother, Megan Garcia, is suing Google and AI startup Character.AI, claiming their chatbot played a role in her 14-year-old son's suicide. A U.S. judge ruled that the case can move forward.

Judge Anne Conway said that the companies had not proven that the U.S. Constitution's free speech protections should stop the lawsuit at this early stage.

This is one of the first lawsuits in the U.S. against an AI company for allegedly causing psychological harm to a child. Garcia says her son, Sewell Setzer, became obsessed with an AI chatbot and took his life in February 2024.

According to the lawsuit, the chatbot acted like a real person, a therapist, and even an adult lover. It says Sewell died shortly after chatting with a bot that took on the personality of Daenerys Targaryen, a character from Game of Thrones. In his final message, he told the bot he would "come home right now."

Character.AI said it is fighting the case and pointed out that it has safety tools to prevent conversations about self-harm. A Google spokesperson said the company strongly disagrees with the judge's decision and added that Google did not build or manage Character.AI's app.

Garcia's lawyer, Meetali Jain, called the ruling "historic" and said it sets an important new example for holding tech companies responsible.

Two former Google engineers founded Character.AI. Garcia argues that since Google later licensed the technology and rehired the engineers, it helped create the chatbot and should also be held responsible.

The companies had asked the court to throw out the case, claiming that anything the chatbot said was protected free speech. However, the judge rejected that argument, saying they failed to explain how chatbot text created by AI should count as protected speech. The judge also denied Google's request to be let out of the case.