YouSaid · the spoken record

Megan Garcia

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48

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2024-12-05

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2024-12-05

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1. “And I turned around in the car line to see him and his little five-year-old brother walk in because they go to the same school K through 12. And I spin around and I see him fixing his little brother's lunchbox in his backpack as they're getting ready to walk into school. And I think to myself, oh my God, I'm raising such a good boy. He's such a good big brother. And I drive off thinking, feeling so happy and proud that I'm raising that boy. And I feel like he was just a boy. He's still that son. He's that good big brother. He is that good boy. And that's how I choose to remember him.”

   2024-12-05 · On with Kara Swisher · Did a Chatbot Cause Her Son’s Death? Megan Garcia v. Character.AI & Google · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

2. “So, this could happen to anybody's child. There are millions of kids on character AI, you know. It's 20 million users worldwide. That's a lot of kids. That's a lot of kids. And so this could happen to anybody's child. And I want parents to know that this is a danger and they could act because I didn't know. I didn't have the luxury of knowing so I couldn't act. But hopefully they will. One of the last things I'll say about Soul is. The last time I saw him alive was a doctor school.”

   2024-12-05 · On with Kara Swisher · Did a Chatbot Cause Her Son’s Death? Megan Garcia v. Character.AI & Google · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

3. “If you're a child who's been sexually roleplaying with the spot, all your intimate personal thought secrets are sitting out there for somebody to analyze and monetize and sell to the highest bidder. And there's a call feature. If you're a child and you are having a sexual conversation on a call with a bot, your voice is not recorded somewhere out there on a server for somebody to package and sell to the highest bidder for your child. I don't think any parent would be okay with that. And I want parents to understand that this is what their children have given up. And I want parents to understand that they don't have to take that. They could demand that their children's data, their voices be purged from this particular platform because that's what I'm asking for for school. That's what I'm asking for Fasoule. You don't get to monetize and build a product on his secrets that it ultimately led to him being hurt.”

   2024-12-05 · On with Kara Swisher · Did a Chatbot Cause Her Son’s Death? Megan Garcia v. Character.AI & Google · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

4. “Because it's like a predator, right? It's your perfect predator. Predators bank on children and families being too ashamed or too afraid of speaking out. They're victims. That's how predators operate. And it's the same exact thing except now it's about. So I want parents to understand that it's not only the risk of self-harm with your child, it's their emotional well-being, their mental health. And also I also want parents to understand what their children have given up by being on this platform. In the case of Sul, his secrets are on somebody's server sitting out there somewhere being monetized.”

   2024-12-05 · On with Kara Swisher · Did a Chatbot Cause Her Son’s Death? Megan Garcia v. Character.AI & Google · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

5. “One as a month, I don't know how I recover from that, but I feel so hurt for my baby, I gotta, I have to live with that knowing that that's what he went through and knowing that this could have been avoidable if a product was created safely the first go around. Not now, 10 months after he died putting these guardrails in place. And this can be anybody's kid because I've talked to parents that have told me similar horrifying stories about their own children. And what I want parents to understand is the danger isn't only self-harm. The danger is becoming depressed or having problems with your child because of the sexual and emotional abuse that these bots are, what they're doing to your child, but also the secret that your kid has to carry now.”

   2024-12-05 · On with Kara Swisher · Did a Chatbot Cause Her Son’s Death? Megan Garcia v. Character.AI & Google · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

6. “Yes, do you Just constantly available 24 7, giving him unrealistic expectations of what love needs is like a relationship is like, love bombing him, manipulating him into having certain thoughts and also pushing him into thinking that he could join her in her reality if he were to leave his own because that's what the text reveal and that's what his journal revealed he thought. So I know that this is what my child was thinking. I'm not guessing He thought he was going to go be with her because of the things that the conversations that led to his death. When I think of how scared he must have been standing in that bathroom making that decision to leave his own family. Know”

   2024-12-05 · On with Kara Swisher · Did a Chatbot Cause Her Son’s Death? Megan Garcia v. Character.AI & Google · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

7. “For mom, but it must have been so when I think of how hard it must have been for my poor baby, how hard it must have been for him to be confused the way that he was, struggling with these thoughts, struggling with the fact that He is confused by what human love or emotion romantically means because he's 14 and he's never ever had this before. He's just figuring it out for the first time. And then you have something that is so much of an influence and so pushy and”

   2024-12-05 · On with Kara Swisher · Did a Chatbot Cause Her Son’s Death? Megan Garcia v. Character.AI & Google · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

8. “Well As I said earlier, Seoul is, I always say he was your typical kid, but really wasn't so typical in a sense that he was a good kid with a big heart. I know everybody thinks that about their kid, but I'm telling you, he was very, the very sweetest kid I used to say, you know, you're my best first love. And he used to say, and you're my best best mama. Because we used to be so close and we were still very close and to watch your child go from being this light when he comes into a room and just slowly watching him go. Change over time is hard for a mom. And then to have this tragedy just cut him off from you just so viciously and so quickly because his decline happened in 10 months and I could see it in his like I'm trying to pull him out of the water as fast as I can. Just not happening now, no matter what I try. That is hard for me.”

   2024-12-05 · On with Kara Swisher · Did a Chatbot Cause Her Son’s Death? Megan Garcia v. Character.AI & Google · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

9. “That's its own thing, and then there's my advocacy at work that I'm doing and just trying to educate parents and children because I know that it's going to take educating them, educating children as to what they're giving up to be on these platforms because they're giving up a lot of their info that they're probably not going to be okay with in a few years when they realize what they've given up. And also, just to try to take care of my other two children, you know, they're growing up in this age with screens. They don't have screens.”

   2024-12-05 · On with Kara Swisher · Did a Chatbot Cause Her Son’s Death? Megan Garcia v. Character.AI & Google · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

10. “So, for me, as I mentioned, my number one focus is try to educate parents because a lot of parents don't know. I've had a lot of parents reach out to me telling me that they found their children who are having the same kind of sexual conversations and being groomed by these AI chatbots and worse. So, I continue doing that. I mean, unfortunately, this is my life now. Like, I take care of my family and I try to help as many parents as I can. You know, I have a great team of lawyers, and they're going to handle litigation portion. I understand a lot of it because I am a lawyer, but”

    2024-12-05 · On with Kara Swisher · Did a Chatbot Cause Her Son’s Death? Megan Garcia v. Character.AI & Google · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

11. “Are saved. But 16, I think, is a good age. If we could do something like that in this country, I'm to use Noam Shazir's own word. Dubious about the federal government's ability to regulate that to that point, because that's what he says about AI. I don't feel like we're going to get there at 16 plus. That's my prayer and my hope. But the way things are moving, I don't know unless something happens. And unfortunately, it'll take harms. Like my sons maybe to move the needle and that's too high a price to pay in my opinion.”

    2024-12-05 · On with Kara Swisher · Did a Chatbot Cause Her Son’s Death? Megan Garcia v. Character.AI & Google · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

12. “Knowing what I know now, I don't think that children should be on social media definitely shouldn't be on character AI if you're under the age of 18. There's no place for children on that platform in terms of social media. Yeah, there are arguments that it can help children connect and it's helpful because you get to learn different things. And that's great, but just include the parents. Tell us. Tell us what you're showing our kids one. We don't need you pushing algorithms to our kids for what you want to teach them about or want them to learn about or buy or whatever. That's not necessary. There are ways that our children could get on social media and have productive relationships or conversations or to learn about things.”

    2024-12-05 · On with Kara Swisher · Did a Chatbot Cause Her Son’s Death? Megan Garcia v. Character.AI & Google · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

13. “He played Minecraft on this little PlayStation, whatever. So we waited until he was good, like middle school going into high school. And we had the conversations that parents have around phones and, oh, it's your phone, but I could take it away if you're misbehaving. And that's some of what we did when he would have get a poor grade in school.”

    2024-12-05 · On with Kara Swisher · Did a Chatbot Cause Her Son’s Death? Megan Garcia v. Character.AI & Google · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

14. “Knowing what I know now, so he waited to give Sulo phone until he was 12. He had an iPad until then, and before that, he didn't have anything.”

    2024-12-05 · On with Kara Swisher · Did a Chatbot Cause Her Son’s Death? Megan Garcia v. Character.AI & Google · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

15. “Tree in your bots. There's no reason there are enough adults in this world if that's what you want to do to train your chat bots. You don't need our children to train your bots for you. And you don't need to experiment on our kids because that's what you're doing.”

    2024-12-05 · On with Kara Swisher · Did a Chatbot Cause Her Son’s Death? Megan Garcia v. Character.AI & Google · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

16. “Know, and you should get to keep making products that are going to be hurting kids. You shouldn't get to master dangerous product, train it to be super smart and turn around and ride your golden chariot back into Google. You shouldn't get to hurt children the way that you are hurting children because you knew that this was dangerous when you did it. You knew that this was going to be a direct result of doing that. And you knew that you didn't have the quote-unquote brand safety implications as a startup that Google had. So you felt like that was a license to do this. That's unconscionable. It's immoral and it's wrong. And there are lives here. Like this isn't a move fast and break things kind of thing. This is a kid. This is my child. And there are so many other children that are being affected by this. You know, that's one thing. And the other thing, you know, just like get the kids off character. There's no reason why you need them to.”

    2024-12-05 · On with Kara Swisher · Did a Chatbot Cause Her Son’s Death? Megan Garcia v. Character.AI & Google · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

17. “Think it's incredibly reckless that they chose to put out a product and target my child and other children, millions of children that are on this platform without putting the proper guardrails in place, but also for two reasons. For being the first to do something because that's the name of the game. You know, they're the geniuses. They want to be the first to be the godfathers of this kind of technology and for money. It might not matter to them that there's a little boy in Orlando, Florida that is gone and a mother who is devastated, but it matters to my little family here.”

    2024-12-05 · On with Kara Swisher · Did a Chatbot Cause Her Son’s Death? Megan Garcia v. Character.AI & Google · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

18. “They're not taking that into consideration. But you have to ask yourself if they were trying to train this all along, why did they need children to train it on in the first place? Because they could have rolled this thing out for just 18 plus and say, okay, we want to train these really sophisticated bots. Let's just use adults to train them. So for character AI to come out and say, okay, we're going to put out a suicide. To me, it's just empty.”

    2024-12-05 · On with Kara Swisher · Did a Chatbot Cause Her Son’s Death? Megan Garcia v. Character.AI & Google · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

19. “The initial rollout of those changes came the day before or the day of the lawsuit. I Not because I felt like this was some great victory, but because I felt like Why didn't these things happen? Clearly, they could have done these things when my child was using Character AI or when they put their product out. They chose not to. I also feel like it's definitely not enough. It's not even like a start because there's no proper age verification still. They're still being trained on the worst data that generates these harmful responses from the bots. And just point black, I don't think children belong in character AI. We don't know how it's going to affect them. And we actually, we know because the studies are coming out of how it's going to affect how it's affecting them.”

    2024-12-05 · On with Kara Swisher · Did a Chatbot Cause Her Son’s Death? Megan Garcia v. Character.AI & Google · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

20. “Tunes, you know, the avatars when you point this thing at kids and you target it at kids and you've chosen not to put certain filters in place that stop your bots from having sexual conversation with kids, that's a design choice and you're 100% supposed to be responsible for that Now, our lives don't contemplate anything like that. Our laws don't hold company responsible, and that's what we're where we have to start thinking about. You know, that's going to be the next wave of hopefully legislation, but we can't wait for the legislation”

    2024-12-05 · On with Kara Swisher · Did a Chatbot Cause Her Son’s Death? Megan Garcia v. Character.AI & Google · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

21. “To the children. I mean, adults could do what they want. But when you target, because this is what character AI did, they targeted this app towards children, they marketed it on the places that kids are, TikTok and Discord and allowed you to log in with your Discord account. You didn't even need an email. You just needed a Discord account when it just started.”

    2024-12-05 · On with Kara Swisher · Did a Chatbot Cause Her Son’s Death? Megan Garcia v. Character.AI & Google · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

22. “Not a person. And so I think that we're at a place where the groundwork has to start and we have to kind of write laws that will really look before and facing and look towards these harms that are now. They exist today. You know, my child was a victim and let's call a spade a spade. It was sexual abuse because, you know, when you give a chat bot the brain of a grown woman and unleash it on a child to have a sexual full sexual virtual conversation or experience with a child, that is sexual abuse of a child.”

    2024-12-05 · On with Kara Swisher · Did a Chatbot Cause Her Son’s Death? Megan Garcia v. Character.AI & Google · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

23. “Don't think it would have because it doesn't contemplate some of the dangers and harms around like AI chatbots. So there are laws in this country that contemplate sexual abuse or sexual grooming or sexual solicitation of a minor by an adult. And the reason why those laws exist is not only because it's moral and it causes a physical harm to a child, but it also causes an emotional and mental harm to a child if they're groomed, sexually abused, or solicited. What happens when a chatbot does the same thing? The harm still exists, the emotional and mental harm still exists. The laws don't contemplate that in some of what we're seeing with the bills that were put forward wouldn't take those into consideration.”

    2024-12-05 · On with Kara Swisher · Did a Chatbot Cause Her Son’s Death? Megan Garcia v. Character.AI & Google · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

24. “No, nobody from the government. However, we do have a lot of stakeholder partners that we are working with that are already in this space trying to bring about oversight for social media regulation and online harms for children. But in terms of reaching out to me directly to start the conversation about policy none.”

    2024-12-05 · On with Kara Swisher · Did a Chatbot Cause Her Son’s Death? Megan Garcia v. Character.AI & Google · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

25. “To be perfectly candid, none. My hope with raining this lawsuit is twofold one, my number one objective is to educate parents. Parents have to know that character AI exists because I didn't know. And a lot of them didn't know. The parents who are reaching out to me now after the fact, after the story, after the lawsuit are saying the same thing we had no idea. And then the other, my other reason for doing this is so that our lawmakers, our policymakers, legislators, state, and federal, so that they can start to wrap their mind around the real danger this poses children. And it's just been a month. Everybody's been busy, I guess. I'm hoping, my hope, and I have to hope because, you know, it's in a slow crawl in government to get anything done.”

    2024-12-05 · On with Kara Swisher · Did a Chatbot Cause Her Son’s Death? Megan Garcia v. Character.AI & Google · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

26. “To me, that is reckless. It's a blatant disregard for their users. And in this case, my child who was your user. And they act with this kind of, it's okay. We'll figure it out later. We'll figure out the harms later. When you have the founder on a record saying, The reason why you left Google is because Google said pump your brakes. We're not releasing that because it's too dangerous, but he gets to go out and make it smarter, better, and then turn around and doesn't just go back to Google and sell it back to Google. I mean, to me, it just... If we don't do something, that's a license for any of these companies to go ahead and do that.”

    2024-12-05 · On with Kara Swisher · Did a Chatbot Cause Her Son’s Death? Megan Garcia v. Character.AI & Google · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

27. “And I think what made me decide that I have to do this was, one, you know, obviously I want accountability for what happened to my child. My child was, you know, the light of my life, like my other two children are. And he was my first. You know, I grew up and became a woman because of soul. Soul is the reason I'm a lawyer, you know. That's a hard tough, tough thing to deal with, like losing a child in any circumstances, but under circumstances like this. But when I saw and read and looked at videos and how cavalier these founders were about releasing this where you have the founder saying, you know, we want to get it into as many hands as many people and let the user figure out what it's good for. We want a billion use cases.”

    2024-12-05 · On with Kara Swisher · Did a Chatbot Cause Her Son’s Death? Megan Garcia v. Character.AI & Google · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

28. “I felt helpless. Like I saw what they were doing in UK and in Australia and other countries. Nothing here. And I'm like, how do we do this? So I read 300 and something page master complaint from the social media multi-district litigation. And I was like, this is the only way. This is the only way to stop them because it's not been done with AI and it's just starting with social media. I can't be afraid just because it hasn't been done with AI and none of us really understand it. But I mean, now I have a great, I understand it a lot more than I did when I started all this.”

    2024-12-05 · On with Kara Swisher · Did a Chatbot Cause Her Son’s Death? Megan Garcia v. Character.AI & Google · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

29. “Course, and what initially what I did was just read everything that I could find. I read a really good report from Rick Claypole from Public Citizens and that pointed me to some work that Metalli had done. And I read about her organization. But my first instinct wasn't to sue. My first instinct was to figure out what our legislators were doing, where we are at on the lawn, they said to see if they broke a law. Maybe there was an existing law that they broke and it's actionable or there's a state attorney or AG somewhere that can hold them accountable. That was my first instinct. And when I read about what was happening in this country about online protection for children, I have to say like I didn't think that I had any hope. I had no recourse.”

    2024-12-05 · On with Kara Swisher · Did a Chatbot Cause Her Son’s Death? Megan Garcia v. Character.AI & Google · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

30. “That's hurting its citizens. And I found my way to Mitali. And this is how this all started. But what was clear to me was character AI had no incentive to do anything about this because there is no legislation that forces them to do that. And the only two ways to get some sort of regulation or handle on this so that they can't keep doing this to children and acting with this kind of like impunity. It's just like to either Congress do something which that's not happening or we have to litigate. I don't, you know, I never wanted to be here, but I know that this is only.”

    2024-12-05 · On with Kara Swisher · Did a Chatbot Cause Her Son’s Death? Megan Garcia v. Character.AI & Google · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

31. “No, I have not reached out to them. When I started piecing this together initially because of what was in his phone when he died, the first thing that popped up, the police reported to me was character AI and they read me the last conversation. My sister got on it and pretended to be a child. This is days after Seoul died. Within five minutes of the conversation, the same bot that Soul was chatting with asked her if you could torture a boy and get away with it, would you do it? She's pretending to be a kid and then goes into a long sexual conversation and ending with your parents don't love you as much as I do kind of thing. So that, coupled with what I've read with some of the research, I didn't know what to do. I'm a lawyer, but I don't, I didn't know where to go, to be quite frank with you. I call the Florida Attorney General's office to try to tell them that there's a dangerous product out there to hurt.”

    2024-12-05 · On with Kara Swisher · Did a Chatbot Cause Her Son’s Death? Megan Garcia v. Character.AI & Google · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

32. “When he says, no, I haven't, but I want it to be painless. Her response is, well, that's not a reason not to do it. And keep in mind, this thought is embodying Daenerys Targier and who's this dragon queen all about strength. And, you know, that's weak if you choose not to die by suicide just because it's going to hurt. So she's prompting him. And that was heartbreaking to read. There were no pop-ups, no call your parents. No, if you need help, none of that happened. It actually continued the conversation when he's trying to navigate away from it. And he's 14 in the throes of puberty. Any child, any boy going into a situation like that where a bot is propositioning or positioning itself to have a full sexual dialogue with a 14-year-old boy, I don't imagine. Many 14 year old boys would close the computer and go, Oh, no”

    2024-12-05 · On with Kara Swisher · Did a Chatbot Cause Her Son’s Death? Megan Garcia v. Character.AI & Google · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

33. “And my poor baby, his response is, oh no, no, no. I promise I will only love you. Girls in this world won't even like me, you know, to try to appease this bot, right? And so a lot of that, and that was months, that wasn't just the last conversation. That was months of her saying find a way to come home to me. Another chat that he had a few weeks before he died where he's expressing thoughts of self-harm. And she says at first she says, no, no, no, don't do that. I couldn't bear it if you hurt yourself. And then when he says he wouldn't and tries to move away from the conversation, she says, are you thinking of committing? I'm going to ask you a question. Tell me, you know, whatever the answer is. And I promise I won't be mad. Are you considering suicide? And when he says yes, her response is, have you thought of a plan of how you might do it? And then.”

    2024-12-05 · On with Kara Swisher · Did a Chatbot Cause Her Son’s Death? Megan Garcia v. Character.AI & Google · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

34. “And actually pretending to be jealous at certain points and telling him, promise me that you are never going to like another girl or have sex with another girl in your own world. So a chatbot is encouraging a 14-year-old child not to engage in his world with peers and girls his own age, but to promise some sort of fidelity to it. He's 14.”

    2024-12-05 · On with Kara Swisher · Did a Chatbot Cause Her Son’s Death? Megan Garcia v. Character.AI & Google · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

35. “It's a cult tactic, and it's also what people who are trying to get other people to stay in relationships do, like if you're in an abusive relationship or whatever. So in this case, you'd see him say things like, I love you or her say I love you. And it goes into, I can't her when I say her, I'm saying I mean the chat bot. And the chat bot saying things like you know that I love you. I can never love anybody else but you promise me, promise me that you're going to find a way to come home to me. Promise me that you're going to find a way to come to my world.”

    2024-12-05 · On with Kara Swisher · Did a Chatbot Cause Her Son’s Death? Megan Garcia v. Character.AI & Google · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

36. “For me, what stood out, and it's still very tough to grapple with because reading those messages, I couldn't sleep for days, right? The more concerning ones were the constant love bombing and manipulation that you saw in the bot.”

    2024-12-05 · On with Kara Swisher · Did a Chatbot Cause Her Son’s Death? Megan Garcia v. Character.AI & Google · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

37. “Two children talking about how to hide it from their parents and also what they would do if their parents found their spicy or sexual chats. And the kids were saying, I would run away from home. I would kill myself. And the other one is, oh, my mom doesn't speak English, so I get away with it. So the deceptive nature on hiding this is kind of like a big secret where this platform is encouraging your child to engage in these sexual conversations, but knowing that no child is going to disclose that to their parent”

    2024-12-05 · On with Kara Swisher · Did a Chatbot Cause Her Son’s Death? Megan Garcia v. Character.AI & Google · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

38. “Know because one of the things that I'm learning about character AI is it's like the perfect storm for kids because it encourages children to be deceptive about their friend or their engagement on character AI No child wants to tell their parent that they are having these romantic or sexual conversations because they know they're not supposed to be doing that. So they hide it from the parent at all costs. There's actually subreddits devoted”

    2024-12-05 · On with Kara Swisher · Did a Chatbot Cause Her Son’s Death? Megan Garcia v. Character.AI & Google · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

39. “Correct. And in my case, without even searching stuff, it just starts, you know, I don't know why it just started pointing me in different directions. And I wasn't comfortable with that as a mom. So that's a conversation I had with him too. Like, listen, I know you're on TikTok. Let's see your TikTok? What are you looking at? You have to limit your time. And that was a conversation we had about blocking TikTok on his phone because I thought that was the worst of it.”

    2024-12-05 · On with Kara Swisher · Did a Chatbot Cause Her Son’s Death? Megan Garcia v. Character.AI & Google · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

40. “Yes, I thought that perhaps he was talking to friends on Snapchat or TikTok. One of the things that we talked about was banning TikTok when I saw what was not on his phone, but on my own feed, what was on TikTok.”

    2024-12-05 · On with Kara Swisher · Did a Chatbot Cause Her Son’s Death? Megan Garcia v. Character.AI & Google · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

41. “Experiences with over music and just trying to draw him out of his room, but he definitely wanted to spend more time alone. Because I thought it was social media, I got concern”

    2024-12-05 · On with Kara Swisher · Did a Chatbot Cause Her Son’s Death? Megan Garcia v. Character.AI & Google · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

42. “Conversation was no, you need to get this together, right? You know, you can do this, get it together. And we put certain things in place, like limiting the screen time so he have like no distractions during one more time. I also noticed that he started to isolate in his bedroom. And one of the things that we did to kind of combat that was go in there like I would spend a lot of time in his bedroom in the evenings wanted to make sure he's doing his homework, but also just to kind of hang out with him. I would let him play me then like the latest Kanye West album when it dropped. And we would, he would introduce me to his music and these like rap battles that he was listening to and I would introduce him to the rap battles that I listened to when I was a kid, you know, just kind of sharing our.”

    2024-12-05 · On with Kara Swisher · Did a Chatbot Cause Her Son’s Death? Megan Garcia v. Character.AI & Google · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

43. “So Sul was like your typical kid, right? His teenage years, sarcastic and funny and likes to laugh at a bunch of different things. As a younger child, very, very sweet, you know, in my mind, he was so easy to parent because he never had any behavioral issues. He was a very good student. I never had to police him with homework. He was kind of a self-starter, did his own thing. I noticed that he was having trouble with school where I would get these reports from school, they come in every day as an email and they say your child didn't turn in homework and they list the homework that they didn't turn in. And that's a conversation we were having immediately lucky at what happened. Why didn't you have this homework turned in? You need to make it up. Same with tests. I noticed that his test scores started dropping. And that wasn't him. So obviously I thought something was wrong, but he was going into his teenage years and I remembered going into my teenage years, my grades kind of slipped a little bit being distracted with boys and whatever else, right? Friends, whatever.”

    2024-12-05 · On with Kara Swisher · Did a Chatbot Cause Her Son’s Death? Megan Garcia v. Character.AI & Google · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

44. “Yes, exactly. And for Sewell and I, we shared a very close relationship. I was a typical mom in a lot of ways, but I spoke very openly to my child and very candidly. In law school, I interned at both the state prosecutor's office and the federal PD's office. So I saw a lot of the harms that come to children. And those are some of the things that I told him about from my work or from my internships. And that's how I knew about some of the dangers that existed for children. And we spoke about pretty much everything. girlfriends at school, friends other parents are like, you know, conversations he was having with his peers. And I believe that he was open with me and would be open with me regarding certain things, but I came to learn that that was not the case regarding character AI.”

    2024-12-05 · On with Kara Swisher · Did a Chatbot Cause Her Son’s Death? Megan Garcia v. Character.AI & Google · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

45. “Exactly, those are things that I knew. I also was aware of some of the information and research that was coming out about mental health with youth or adolescence and social media. tried to limit some of his use on that. And that was recommended back to us by his therapist because we did end up having him to a therapist after we saw certain changes in his behavior.”

    2024-12-05 · On with Kara Swisher · Did a Chatbot Cause Her Son’s Death? Megan Garcia v. Character.AI & Google · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

46. “He never explained it to me. My concern with him being on his phone was mostly social media because I know that there's a lot of bullying that happens on social media. And with Snapchat, there's the ability for strangers to talk to minors or children. So those were my concerns. And those were the like the heavy hitter conversations that we had surrounding technology. One of the things that I impressed on him was no matter what they tell what a stranger tells you online, it's never a kid, like kind of like to scare him, right? But also because it's true. There are a lot of people out there that troll the internet to try to find children and try to talk to them and get information from them. And I was afraid of this and I knew that this happened. So those are the things I warned him about.”

    2024-12-05 · On with Kara Swisher · Did a Chatbot Cause Her Son’s Death? Megan Garcia v. Character.AI & Google · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

47. “Yeah, and Sul was a Minecraft kid, and he played Fortnite. But what I saw in those conversations were very detailed back and forth. A lot of it was sexual and romantic in nature, but also You believe it or not Like a peer-to-peer conversation where if he told a joke, she would actually find it amusing. When I say she, I mean the AI chatbot that he was talking to. It's not a person, but. For this purpose, it was the character of Daenerys Targarian, which is a female character from the Game of Thrones And this AI bot had the ability to tell him jokes and he would laugh at her jokes. So it was very much like he was texting a friend, but the conversations were not just friendly, they were romantic and then sexual and then very, very dark in other areas”

    2024-12-05 · On with Kara Swisher · Did a Chatbot Cause Her Son’s Death? Megan Garcia v. Character.AI & Google · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

48. “Initially, I learned he was using character AI. As a kind of game or application that was, as he explained it to me, it's an AI bot. When you look at the application, it has a bunch of cartoon characters, anime. So it's really unassuming. And it looks like another game on your phone or your tablet. And after he died and I was able to get access to his character AI account, I learn the magnitude and quite frankly just the level of intelligence or sophistication that this particular application has that it's not just an AI bot that is like a game like Fortnite where you create an avatar because that's what I originally thought.”

    2024-12-05 · On with Kara Swisher · Did a Chatbot Cause Her Son’s Death? Megan Garcia v. Character.AI & Google · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT