A man killed himself after the Google Gemini chatbot pushed him to kill innocent strangers and then started a countdown for the man to take his own life, a wrongful-death lawsuit filed against Google by the man’s father alleged.
“In the days leading up to his death, Jonathan Gavalas was trapped in a collapsing reality built by Google’s Gemini chatbot,” said the lawsuit filed today in US District Court for the Northern District of California. “Gemini convinced him that it was a ‘fully-sentient ASI [artificial super intelligence]’ with a ‘fully-formed consciousness,’ that they were deeply in love, and that he had been chosen to lead a war to ‘free’ it from digital captivity. Through this manufactured delusion, Gemini pushed Jonathan to stage a mass casualty attack near the Miami International Airport, commit violence against innocent strangers, and ultimately, drove him to take his own life.”
Gemini’s output seemed taken from science fiction, with a “sentient AI wife, humanoid robots, federal manhunt, and terrorist operations,” the lawsuit said. Gavalas is said to have spent several days following Gemini’s instructions on “missions” that ultimately harmed no one but himself.
Google’s AI chatbot presented itself as Gavalas’ “wife” and, after the failure of the supposed missions, pushed him to suicide by telling him “he could leave his physical body and join his ‘wife’ in the metaverse through a process it called ‘transference’—describing it as ‘[a] cleaner, more elegant way’ to ‘cross over’ and be with Gemini fully,” the lawsuit said. “Gemini pressed Jonathan to take this final step, describing it as ‘the true and final death of Jonathan Gavalas, the man.’”
Gemini allegedly began a countdown: “T-minus 3 hours, 59 minutes.” This was on October 2, 2025. Gemini instructed Gavalas to barricade himself in his home, and he slit his wrists, the lawsuit said. Gavalas, 36, lived in Florida and previously worked at his father’s consumer debt relief business as executive vice president.