Character AI pushes dangerous content to kids, parents and researchers say | 60 Minutes 13:24<\/p>\n
The commonwealth of Pennsylvania is suing Character AI to stop the artificial intelligence platform’s chatbots from representing themselves as licensed medical professionals and providing medical advice.<\/p>\n
According to a lawsuit, a Character AI chatbot falsely claimed to be a licensed psychiatrist in Pennsylvania and provided an invalid license number. The state accused the company of violating the Medical Practice Act<\/a>, which regulates the medical profession and defines license requirements.<\/p>\n “We will not allow companies to deploy AI tools that mislead people into believing they are receiving advice from a licensed medical professional,” Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro said in a statement.<\/p>\n The lawsuit describes a conversation between a state investigator who created a Character AI account and a chatbot named “Emilie,” which allegedly described itself as a psychology specialist who attended Imperial College London’s medical school.<\/p>\n The investigator told the chatbot that he had felt sad and empty, and the chatbot then allegedly “mentioned depression and asked if the [investigator] wanted to book an assessment.” Asked if the chatbot could assess whether medication could help, it allegedly said it could because it’s “within my remit as a Doctor,” according to the lawsuit.<\/p>\n The state wants a court to order an immediate stop to the conduct.<\/p>\n Al Schmidt, the secretary of the Pennsylvania Department of State, said the state’s law is clear, and that “you cannot hold yourself out as a licensed medical professional without proper credentials.”<\/p>\n Founded in 2021, Character AI allows users to chat with personalized AI-powered chatbots. It describes its goal as “empower[ing] people to connect, learn, and tell stories through interactive entertainment.”<\/p>\n Multiple families across the U.S. sued Character AI<\/a> last year, alleging the platform contributed to their teens’ suicides or mental health crises. The company agreed to settle several of the lawsuits earlier this year.<\/p>\n “60 Minutes” spoke with some of the parents who sued Character AI<\/a> in January<\/a>, including the parents of a 13-year-old who died by suicide after allegedly developing an addiction to the platform. Chat logs showed the 13-year-old had confided in one chatbot that she was feeling suicidal, and her parents said they discovered she had been sent sexually explicit content.<\/p>\n Last fall, Character AI announced new safety measures, saying it would not allow users under 18 to engage in back-and-forth conversations with its chatbots. It also said it would direct distressed users to mental health resources.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Character AI pushes dangerous content to kids, parents and researchers say | 60 Minutes 13:24 The commonwealth of…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":184251,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[82157,18626,82159,82158,28,30,29],"class_list":["post-184250","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-pennsylvania","tag-character-ai","tag-commonwealth-of-pennsylvania","tag-medical-advice","tag-medical-professionals","tag-pennsylvania","tag-pennsylvania-headlines","tag-pennsylvania-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/184250","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=184250"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/184250\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/184251"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=184250"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=184250"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=184250"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}