Senators Demand Safety Records from AI Chatbot Apps as Controversy Grows

Two senators have sent a letter to multiple AI companion companies requesting information about their safety practices, including details about internal safety assessments and timelines of the implementation of guardrails, as CNN reported yesterday. The action follows the filing of two high-profile child welfare lawsuits against the Google-tied chatbot startup Character.AI, which has been accused in court filings by three families of facilitating the sexual and emotional abuse of minor users, allegedly resulting in severe mental and emotional suffering, violence, behavioral changes, and one death. (Google and Character.AI cofounders Noam Shazeer and Daniel de Freitas are also named as defendants in the lawsuits.) Drafted by democratic senators Alex Padilla of California and Peter Welch of Massachusetts, the letter cites details of the accusations against Character.AI as cause for alarm, calling specific attention to concern for minor users of AI companion apps and directly referencin ... Read full article.