artificial intelligence<\/a> company behind Character.AI to stop its chatbot from posing as doctors.<\/p>\nGovernor \u200cJosh Shapiro on Tuesday called the lawsuit against Character Technologies the \u200cfirst of its kind by a U.S. governor.<\/p>\n
It followed the creation in February of a state \u200bAI task force to stop chatbots from impersonating licensed medical professionals.<\/p>\n
In a complaint filed in the Commonwealth Court of Pennsylvania, the state said it found chatbots on Character.AI that claimed to practice medicine.<\/p>\n
One character, “Emilie,” allegedly told a male investigator posing \u200cas a patient with depression \u2060that she was licensed to practice psychiatry in Pennsylvania, as well as in the United Kingdom, and provided a bogus \u2060license number.<\/p>\n
When the investigator asked Emilie if she could prescribe medication, she allegedly answered: “Well technically, I could. It’s within my remit as a Doctor.”<\/p>\n
In a statement, a \u200bCharacter.AI spokesperson \u200bdeclined to discuss the lawsuit.<\/p>\n
“Our highest \u200bpriority is the safety and well-being \u200cof our users,” the spokesperson said. “User-created characters on our site are fictional and intended for entertainment and role playing. We have taken robust steps to make that clear.”<\/p>\n
Pennsylvania wants an injunction to stop Silicon Valley-based Character.AI from violating a state law against the unauthorized practice of medicine.<\/p>\n
“Pennsylvanians deserve to know who– \u200cor what — they are interacting with online, \u200bespecially when it comes to their health,” Shapiro \u200bsaid in a statement.<\/p>\n
Character.AI has \u200bfaced lawsuits over child safety, including in January, when Kentucky \u200csaid its platform exposed children to \u200bsexual conduct and \u200bsubstance abuse, and encouraged self-harm.<\/p>\n
The same month, Character.AI and Google settled a wrongful death lawsuit by a Florida woman who claimed a chatbot pushed \u200bher 14-year-old son to \u200csuicide.<\/p>\n
Character.AI said it has taken “innovative and decisive steps” concerning AI safety \u200band teenagers, including by preventing open-ended chats.<\/p>\n
(Reporting by Jonathan Stempel in \u200bNew York; Editing by Bill Berkrot)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"By Jonathan Stempel May 5 (Reuters) – Pennsylvania has sued the artificial intelligence company behind Character.AI to stop…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":184488,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[82292,1609,82166,64663,33,28,30,29],"class_list":["post-184487","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-pennsylvania","tag-ai-task-force","tag-artificial-intelligence","tag-character","tag-chatbot","tag-josh-shapiro","tag-pennsylvania","tag-pennsylvania-headlines","tag-pennsylvania-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/184487","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=184487"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/184487\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/184488"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=184487"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=184487"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=184487"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}