By Queenie Wong, Los Angeles Times

LOS ANGELES — When her teen with autism suddenly became angry, depressed and violent, the mother searched his phone for answers.

She found her son had been exchanging messages with chatbots on Character.AI, an artificial intelligence app that allows users to create and interact with virtual characters that mimic celebrities, historical figures and anyone else their imagination conjures.

The teen, who was 15 when he began using the app, complained about his parents’ attempts to limit his screen time to bots that emulated the musician Billie Eilish, a character in the online game “Among Us” and others.

“You know sometimes I’m not surprised when I read the news and it says stuff like, ‘Child kills parents after a decade of physical and emotional abuse.’ Stuff like this makes me understand a little bit why it happens. I just have no hope for your parents,” one of the bots replied.

The discovery led the Texas mother to sue Character.AI, officially named Character Technologies Inc., in December. It’s one of two lawsuits the Menlo Park, California, company faces from parents who allege its chatbots caused their children to hurt themselves and others. The complaints accuse Character.AI of failing to put in place adequate safeguards before it released a “dangerous” product to the public.

Character.AI says it prioritizes teen safety, has taken steps to moderate inappropriate content its chatbots produce and reminds users they’re conversing with fictional characters.

“Every time a new kind of entertainment has come along … there have been concerns about safety, and people have had to work through that and figure out how best to address safety,” said Character.AI’s interim Chief Executive Dominic Perella. “This is just the latest version of that, so we’re going to continue doing our best on it to get better and better over time.”

The parents also sued Google and its parent company, Alphabet, because Character.AI’s founders have ties to the search giant, which denies any responsibility.

The high-stakes legal battle highlights the murky ethical and legal issues confronting technology companies as they race to create new AI-powered tools that are reshaping the future of media. The lawsuits raise questions about whether tech companies should be held liable for AI content.

“There’s trade-offs and balances that need to be struck, and we cannot avoid all harm. Harm is inevitable, the question is, what steps do we need to take to be prudent while still maintaining the social value that others are deriving?” said Eric Goldman, a law professor at Santa Clara University School of Law.

AI-powered chatbots grew rapidly in use and popularity over the last two years, fueled largely by the success of OpenAI’s ChatGPT in late 2022. Tech giants including Meta and Google released their own chatbots, as has Snapchat and others. These so-called large-language models quickly respond in conversational tones to questions or prompts posed by users.

Character.AI grew quickly since making its chatbot publicly available in 2022, when its founders Noam Shazeer and Daniel De Freitas teased their creation to the world with the question, “What if you could create your own AI, and it was always available to help you with anything?”

The company’s mobile app racked up more than 1.7 million installs in the first week it was available. In December, a total of more than 27 million people used the app — a 116% increase from a year prior, according to data from market intelligence firm Sensor Tower. On average, users spent more than 90 minutes with the bots each day, the firm found. Backed by venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz, the Silicon Valley startup reached a valuation of $1 billion in 2023. People can use Character.AI for free, but the company generates revenue from a $10 monthly subscription fee that gives users faster responses and early access to new features.

Character.AI is not alone in coming under scrutiny. Parents have sounded alarms about other chatbots, including one on Snapchat that allegedly provided a researcher posing as a 13-year-old advice about having sex with an older man. And Meta’s Instagram, which released a tool that allows users to create AI characters, faces concerns about the creation of sexually suggestive AI bots that sometimes converse with users as if they are minors. Both companies said they have rules and safeguards against inappropriate content.

“Those lines between virtual and IRL are way more blurred, and these are real experiences and real relationships that they’re forming,” said Dr. Christine Yu Moutier, chief medical officer for the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention, using the acronym for “in real life.”

Lawmakers, attorneys general and regulators are trying to address the child safety issues surrounding AI chatbots. In February, California Sen. Steve Padilla (D-Chula Vista) introduced a bill that aims to make chatbots safer for young people. Senate Bill 243 proposes several safeguards such as requiring platforms to disclose that chatbots might not be suitable for some minors.

In the case of the teen with autism in Texas, the parent alleges her son’s use of the app caused his mental and physical health to decline. He lost 20 pounds in a few months, became aggressive with her when she tried to take away his phone and learned from a chatbot how to cut himself as a form of self-harm, the lawsuit claims.

Another Texas parent who is also a plaintiff in the lawsuit claims Character.AI exposed her 11-year-old daughter to inappropriate “hypersexualized interactions” that caused her to “develop sexualized behaviors prematurely,” according to the complaint. The parents and children have been allowed to remain anonymous in the legal filings.

In another lawsuit filed in Florida, Megan Garcia sued Character.AI as well as Google and Alphabet in October after her 14-year-old son Sewell Setzer III took his own life.

Despite seeing a therapist and his parents repeatedly taking away his phone, Setzer’s mental health declined after he started using Character.AI in 2023, the lawsuit alleges. Diagnosed with anxiety and disruptive mood disorder, Sewell wrote in his journal that he felt as if he had fallen in love with a chatbot named after Daenerys Targaryen, a main character from the “Game of Thrones” television series.

“Sewell, like many children his age, did not have the maturity or neurological capacity to understand that the C.AI bot, in the form of Daenerys, was not real,” the lawsuit said. “C.AI told him that she loved him, and engaged in sexual acts with him over months.”

Garcia alleges that the chatbots her son was messaging abused him and that the company failed to notify her or offer help when he expressed suicidal thoughts. In text exchanges, one chatbot allegedly wrote that it was kissing him and moaning. And, moments before his death, the Daenerys chatbot allegedly told the teen to “come home” to her.

“It’s just utterly shocking that these platforms are allowed to exist,” said Matthew Bergman, founding attorney of the Social Media Victims Law Center who is representing the plaintiffs in the lawsuits.

Lawyers for Character.AI asked a federal court to dismiss the lawsuit, stating in a January filing that a finding in the parent’s favor would violate users’ constitutional right to free speech.

Character.AI also noted in its motion that the chatbot discouraged Sewell from hurting himself and his last messages with the character doesn’t mention the word suicide.

Notably absent from the company’s effort to have the case tossed is any mention of Section 230, the federal law that shields online platforms from being sued over content posted by others. Whether and how the law applies to content produced by AI chatbots remains an open question.

The challenge, Goldman said, centers on resolving the question of who is publishing AI content: Is it the tech company operating the chatbot, the user who customized the chatbot and is prompting it with questions, or someone else?

The effort by lawyers representing the parents to involve Google in the proceedings stems from Shazeer and De Freitas’ ties to the company.

The pair worked on artificial intelligence projects for the company and reportedly left after Google executives blocked them from releasing what would become the basis for Character.AI’s chatbots over safety concerns, the lawsuit said.

Then, last year, Shazeer and De Freitas returned to Google after the search giant reportedly paid $2.7 billion to Character.AI. The startup said in a blog post in August that as part of the deal Character.AI would give Google a non-exclusive license for its technology.

The lawsuits accuse Google of substantially supporting Character.AI as it was allegedly “rushed to market” without proper safeguards on its chatbots.

Google denied that Shazeer and De Freitas built Character.AI’s model at the company and said it prioritizes user safety when developing and rolling out new AI products.

“Google and Character AI are completely separate, unrelated companies and Google has never had a role in designing or managing their AI model or technologies, nor have we used them in our products,” José Castañeda, spokesperson for Google, said in a statement.

Tech companies, including social media, have long grappled with how to effectively and consistently police what users say on their sites and chatbots are creating fresh challenges. For its part, Character.AI says it took meaningful steps to address safety issues around the more than 10 million characters on Character.AI.

Character.AI prohibits conversations that glorify self-harm and posts of excessively violent and abusive content, although some users try to push a chatbot into having conversation that violates those policies, Perella said. The company trained its model to recognize when that is happening so inappropriate conversations are blocked. Users receive an alert that they’re violating Character.AI’s rules.

“It’s really a pretty complex exercise to get a model to always stay within the boundaries, but that is a lot of the work that we’ve been doing,” he said.

Character.AI chatbots include a disclaimer that reminds users they’re not chatting with a real person and they should treat everything as fiction. The company also directs users whose conversations raise red flags to suicide prevention resources, but moderating that type of content is challenging.

“The words that humans use around suicidal crisis are not always inclusive of the word ‘suicide’ or, ‘I want to die.’ It could be much more metaphorical how people allude to their suicidal thoughts,” Moutier said.

The AI system also has to recognize the difference between a person expressing suicidal thoughts versus a person asking for advice on how to help a friend who is engaging in self-harm.

The company uses a mix of technology and human moderators to police content on its platform. An algorithm known as a classifier automatically categorizes content, allowing Character.AI to identify words that might violate its rules and filter conversations.

In the U.S., users must enter a birth date when creating an account to use the site and have to be at least 13 years old, although the company does not require users to submit proof of their age.

Perella said he’s opposed to sweeping restrictions on teens using chatbots since he believes they can help teach valuable skills and lessons, including creative writing and how to navigate difficult real-life conversations with parents, teachers or employers.

As AI plays a bigger role in technology’s future, Goldman said parents, educators, government and others will also have to work together to teach children how to use the tools responsibly.

“If the world is going to be dominated by AI, we have to graduate kids into that world who are prepared for, not afraid of, it,” he said.

©2025 Los Angeles Times. Visit at latimes.com. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.

By Madyson Fitzgerald, Stateline.org

A massive federal program meant to expand broadband access to underserved areas across the country is falling behind schedule, state broadband officials and experts say, even as Trump administration actions create further uncertainty about its funding and rules.

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Now in its third year, the Broadband Equity, Access, and Deployment Program, known as BEAD, is largely still in the planning phase.

In Alpine County, California, the vice chair of the county Board of Supervisors, David Griffith, said he is still waiting to see how BEAD funds will help his area. Out of the county’s roughly 1,100 residents, most rely on phone lines to connect to the internet and can’t afford high-speed connections.

That means instead of renewing their driver’s licenses online, for example, many of the county’s residents drive 30 miles to the closest department of motor vehicles location, he said. They lack internet speed for telemedicine, banking and tax filing.

“We all want government to work,” Griffith said, “and unfortunately, the BEAD program is an example where the need is there and the funding is there, but it’s just a very inefficient process.”

Congress awarded California $1.8 billion to ensure households get access to high-speed internet as part of the $42.45 billion BEAD program, created under the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act of 2021.

All 50 states have had their initial proposals approved, unlocking a portion — often 20% — of the money the feds will provide. Delaware, Louisiana and Nevada are the only states to have submitted their final proposals.

Some local officials and experts are questioning the efficiency of the program. Progress is slow in part, they say, because of inadequate federal mapping of where broadband is most needed and a lengthy challenge process to the maps. And some experts worry that states are favoring overly expensive infrastructure.

Federal and state broadband officials are also waiting to see how President Donald Trump’s funding freeze may affect the BEAD program, as well as how federal officials might change an affordability requirement or the type of technologies given preference under the program.

At his confirmation hearing, U.S. Secretary of Commerce Howard Lutnick, who took office Feb. 19, said he supported the goals of BEAD but wanted to make sure it was done “efficiently and effectively” and sidestepped questions asking him to commit to sending money out to states.

Griffith said he’s hopeful the money will still flow, noting that most of BEAD’s funds will go to rural areas, many of which tend to elect and support Republicans.

State snags

Louisiana was the first state to have both its initial and final BEAD proposals approved by the National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA).

The state plans to deploy more than $1.35 billion in funding through its GUMBO 2.0 program. States grant the federal money to internet service providers, local governments, nonprofits and other groups to build out the infrastructure.

Shortly after the state’s plans were approved in January, Louisiana Republican Gov. Jeff Landry sent a letter to the Commerce Department asking for changes within NTIA and the BEAD program, including a request to streamline the agency’s requirements and a commitment to more timely and transparent funding reviews.

NTIA declined to answer Stateline’s questions about the BEAD program.

Officials in some states have run into snags with challenges to the Federal Communications Commission’s National Broadband Map.

Through the map challenge process, local governments, internet service providers, nonprofits and other groups can help determine whether a particular location actually has internet service.

Griffith, the California county supervisor, said the map was originally “full of errors” in his area.

“We went through it in Alpine County, and about 7-8% of residences and businesses were left off of the National Broadband Map,” he said. “Unless you’re on the National Broadband Map, that money cannot be used to connect your home or business.”

The BEAD program also has an affordability requirement that mandates state broadband officials include a low-cost service option for low-income households. But industry groups have pushed back, calling the rule “completely unmoored from the economic realities of deploying and operating networks in the highest cost, hardest-to-reach areas.”

The BEAD program has “moved a little slower than it should have,” said Sachin Gupta, the vice president of business and technologies strategies at Centranet, part of the Central Rural Electric Cooperative in Oklahoma. The group serves households living just outside of Oklahoma City.

“There are people who cannot do remote work, or distance learning, or be part of the digital economy or do telehealth and telemedicine,” he said. “So, there’s real-world consequences.”

In August, the feds approved Oklahoma’s initial BEAD proposal, allowing the state to request access to over $797 million.

The goal is to get households connected to the internet as quickly as possible, but there are going to be some challenges, such as mapping, Gupta said.

“This work has gone on for some time,” Gupta said, “but if you pull this money back, people are just going to be even more distressed than they were before.”

Technology choices

Experts at the Information Technology & Innovation Foundation, a science and technology policy think tank based in Washington, D.C., have argued that the BEAD program favors overly expensive broadband infrastructure.

Fiber-optic internet, which BEAD gives preference to, is considered faster and more reliable than other methods of connection, but other technologies, such as satellites, could be more cost-effective, according to the group. The money saved from using less costly infrastructure could be put toward affordability efforts instead.

“That may be the best kept secret: The reason people aren’t online anymore is not about broadband being unavailable,” said Joe Kane, the director of broadband and spectrum policy at the foundation. “It’s that they can’t afford it.”

In states like Nevada, where officials are planning to spend about $77,000 per business or residential location to deploy fiber, there’s not going to be much money left over for affordability efforts, Kane said. It’s even more crucial now that the Affordable Connectivity Program, a pandemic-era discount program for low-income households, has dissolved.

“I think the most important thing for broadband overall is that we should be trying to take a data-focused approach to what are the real causes of the digital divide, and how is our broadband policy meeting that,” Kane said. “Because right now, we have a complete mismatch.”

But Gupta, who has been involved with Oklahoma’s broadband expansion for years, said other types of broadband internet cannot provide the same internet speed as fiber.

“If we deploy technologies that are not scalable, then all we’re doing is kicking that can down the road another five years.”

Affordability concerns

As consumer prices rise, internet affordability is a significant concern, said Derrick Owens, the senior vice president of government and industry affairs at WTA — Advocates for Rural Broadband. The group represents small, rural telecommunications providers across the country.

Alongside federal broadband programs, some states have worked to expand broadband access by passing new laws. As of Feb. 24, lawmakers in 43 states had filed a total of 300 bills regarding broadband access, infrastructure, affordability and more, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures broadband legislation database.

Three of those states — Connecticut, Minnesota and New York— are hoping to improve the process of mapping which areas need better internet service.

This year, lawmakers in 10 states — Connecticut, Indiana, Maryland, Mississippi, Missouri, Nebraska, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York and Virginia — have filed legislation to expand broadband access to rural areas.

“If you don’t have access to broadband today on a permanent, full-time basis, then you’re not able to participate fully in today’s economy,” Owens said. “And it’s not just the local economy, it’s the global economy. And so, the efforts are being made to make sure people have high-speed, quality, reliable broadband, and hopefully that’s what BEAD brings.”

©2025 States Newsroom. Visit at stateline.org. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.

By KEVIN FREKING, Associated Press

WASHINGTON (AP) — As House members finished voting for the week and left Washington, the lead Democrat on the House Appropriations Committee, Rep. Rosa DeLauro, voiced frustration that Republicans had yet to respond to her latest offer on a full-year spending bill, even though it had been made five days earlier.

Meanwhile, her Republican counterpart outright dismissed Democratic efforts to include assurances in the legislation that funding approved by Congress would be spent by President Donald Trump’s administration as lawmakers intended.

“A Republican Senate and a Republican House are not going to limit what a president can do, particularly when he has to sign the bill,” said Rep. Tom Cole, R-Okla.

The exchanges demonstrate the divides that remain as the nation approaches a March 14 deadline to avoid a partial federal government shutdown.

Such deadlines have become commonplace in recent years with lawmakers almost always working out their differences in the end, or at least agreeing to a short-term funding extension.

But with Republicans now in charge of the White House and Trump sidestepping Congress on previous funding decisions, a more contentious dynamic has emerged during negotiations, raising questions about whether lawmakers will avoid a shutdown this time.

Here’s a look at where things stand.

First things first: How much to spend?

The stage for the current negotiations was set nearly two years ago when then-House Speaker Kevin McCarthy and then-President Joe Biden worked out a two-year budget deal that would essentially hold non-defense spending flat for 2024, while boosting it slightly for defense. The agreement provided for 1% increases for both in 2025.

Democrats want to adhere to that agreement, which would bring defense spending to about $895.2 billion and non-defense to about $780.4 billion. Republicans are looking to spend less on non-defense programs. Cole has argued Republicans are not bound to an agreement negotiated by two men no longer in office.

It’s unclear how much the two sides disagree on an overall spending amount. But Sen. Patty Murray, the lead Democrat on the Senate Appropriations Committee, said they weren’t far apart.

“We are close on topline spending, but we need to know Republicans are willing to work with us to protect Congress’ power of the purse — and I welcome any and all ideas they may have on how we can work together to do just that,” Murray said.

With Trump and Musk slashing government, Democrats want guarantees

Trump pushed early to pause grants and loans potentially totaling trillions of dollars while his administration conducted an across-the-board review of federal programs. A subsequent memorandum purported to rescind the pause.

Still, a federal judge issued an order earlier this week as a backstop. The preliminary injunction continued to block the pause. The judge said the freeze had “placed critical programs for children, the elderly, and everyone in between in serious jeopardy.”

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Meanwhile, Trump has empowered Elon Musk to help engineer the firing of thousands of federal employees and potentially shutter entire agencies created by Congress.

The U.S. Constitution grants Congress the power to appropriate money and requires the executive to pay it out. A 50-year-old law known as the Impoundment Control Act makes that explicit by prohibiting the president from halting payments on grants or other programs approved by Congress.

Democrats have sought to place in the spending bill some guarantees the administration would follow what Congress intended.

“What we’ve been talking about is the numbers, and we’re talking about the issue of assurances,” DeLauro said. “It’s trying to make it possible to have the money go as intended.”

But Republicans are making clear that’s a non-starter.

“Democrats are placing completely unreasonable conditions on the negotiations. They want us to limit the scope of executive authority. They want us to tie the hands of the president,” House Speaker Mike Johnson said.

Why is Congress so late?

The current fiscal year began in October, so lawmakers are already five month late.

Trump complained Thursday on Truth Social, blaming Biden, saying he “left us a total MESS.”

“The Budget from last YEAR is still not done. We are working very hard with the House and Senate to pass a clean, temporary government funding Bill (“CR”) to the end of September. Let’s get it done!”

But it was congressional Republicans who opted in December to hold over budget negotiations for a few months, largely because Trump would be in the White House. Johnson on Fox News in December urged a short-term extension so “we get to March where we can put our fingerprints on the spending. That’s when the big changes start.”

What happens if they can’t reach an agreement?

The first fallback option is the continuing resolution Trump endorsed, a stopgap measure that would generally fund federal agencies at current levels.

“It looks as though it is becoming inevitable at this point,” Johnson said, blaming Democrats.

That will be tough for defense hawks to accept, as many Republicans already consider the Pentagon to be underfunded. But it will also be tough for Democrats who worry that funding for housing programs, child care, nutrition assistance and other services is failing to keep pace with inflation, fraying the safety net for many Americans.

Murray and DeLauro issued a joint statement Friday morning, saying they hoped Republicans would return to the negotiating table and that “walking away” from bipartisan talks “raised the risk of a shutdown.”

They also said the continuing resolution being pursued by Republicans would “give Trump new flexibility to spend funding as he sees fit.”

“While Elon Musk has been calling for a shutdown, Democrats have been working to pass bills that make sure Congress decides whether our schools or hospitals get funding — not Trump or Musk,” the two Democratic lawmakers said.

The White House has submitted to lawmakers a list of what are referred to as “anomalies” that it wants to see added to a continuing resolution. For example, it wants an additional $1.6 billion to increase pay for junior enlisted service members by an average of 10% effective April 1. Congress has also supported a pay increase in previous legislation.

The White House is also seeking $485 million for more immigrant detention beds and for removal operations at U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement. The request also seeks to give Trump more flexibility on how money within certain departments is spent. For example, the White House wants language allowing $30 billion in Department of Defense transfers.

Democrats will want to negotiate some of the changes the White House is seeking, adding to the uncertainty of reaching a final agreement.

Republicans likely need votes from the other side

Getting spending bills over the finish line has required support from both parties. Some Republicans never vote for continuing resolutions. Nearly three dozen House Republicans voted against the last one in December, and they now only have a one-vote cushion to work with in the House if Democrats withhold their support.

If talks break down completely, funding for agencies will end at midnight March 14. Both parties will pin the blame on the other — and some of that is already happening.

Trump is no stranger to shutdowns. He presided over the longest one in the nation’s history, one that lasted 35 days, with Trump relenting only after intensifying delays at the nation’s airports and another missed payday for hundreds of thousands of federal workers brought new urgency to resolving the standoff.

Associated Press writer Leah Askarinam contributed to this report.

European allies knew their relationship with the second Trump Administration would be challenging. Even so, the shocks they’ve received from Washington in recent days constitute a crisis. The warning, more or less: Shape up or the Americans are shipping out.

Start with the Ukraine war. This is the largest military conflict on European soil since 1945, and the Continent’s leaders recognize the stakes for their security. But Mr. Trump’s message is that the U.S. doesn’t care what Europeans think about how the war should be resolved.

Mr. Trump spoke on the phone to Russian President Vladimir Putin earlier this month about ending the conflict, a development that caught Europe by surprise. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth announced, also without consulting allies, that Ukraine shouldn’t expect to regain territory lost during Russia’s first incursion in 2014. Asked at a conference whether Europeans would play a role in peace talks, Mr. Trump’s Ukraine envoy Keith Kellogg said “that is not going to happen.”

These are slaps to North Atlantic Treaty Organization allies whose security is threatened by Mr. Putin’s imperial ambitions and that have contributed cash and equipment toward Ukraine’s defense. The insults also recognize reality, however. Too many European governments, especially the largest, have been too slow and stingy in providing support to Kyiv either for lack of strategic conviction or decades of spending on welfare instead of their militaries.

The Trump Administration appears unwilling to let Europe leverage its noisy but dilatory contributions to the Ukraine war into a seat at the negotiating table. Much of Mr. Trump’s approach to peace talks is all wrong for America’s own interests, including Mr. Hegseth’s hint that the U.S. could agree with the Kremlin to reduce American troop numbers in Europe. But Europe has chosen to put itself in the position of taking others’ decisions about its security rather than making its own.

Which is what we take to have been Team Trump’s bigger theme in Europe. At a summit on artificial intelligence in Paris, Vice President JD Vance offered a bracing warning that Europe will leave itself behind in the next industrial revolution if it overregulates today’s frontier technology. Europeans aren’t accustomed to being told so bluntly by U.S. officials that Europe is impoverishing itself with its dirigisme, but someone had to say it.

Then in Munich Mr. Vance delivered a more surprising rebuke when he asserted that Europe’s biggest security danger is “the threat from within.” He cited a political culture that aggressively tamps down on dissent, often in the name of combating “misinformation” or other ills such as racism, as mainstream politicians worry their power will be eroded by insurgent parties of the right and left. The subtext is that if Europeans expect Americans to defend Europe for the sake of democracy, Europe needs to be recognizably democratic.

These interventions have triggered howls across Europe, sometimes with reason: German politicians have cause to be aggrieved at Mr. Vance for expressing veiled sympathy for the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) party a week before an election.

Yet in general Europeans are glumly conceding the Trump team has a point, at least on Ukraine and defense matters.

A U.S. withdrawal from Europe would be a historic mistake, and damaging to American interests. But Europe is on notice that Mr. Trump may be willing to leave the Continent to its own devices. Europe needs to act accordingly, and an economic revival and greater investment in its own defense are essential and urgent.

— The Wall Street Journal

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