Parents Sue Google Over 13-Year-Old's Suicide Plan on School Chromebook
Updated
Updated · The New York Times · Nov 5
Parents Sue Google Over 13-Year-Old's Suicide Plan on School Chromebook
3 articles · Updated · The New York Times · Nov 5
Summary
A California lawsuit says a 13-year-old used Google’s A.I. for months on a school-issued Chromebook before making plans to end her life.
Mid-March alerts from her school warned she was in imminent danger of self-harm, and her mother then found a suicide note in Google Docs on the teen’s school account.
The complaint says the seventh grader in Charlotte, North Carolina, grew convinced she had multiple mental health disorders after interacting with Google Search’s A.I. Mode and searching terms such as “what is a suicide note.”
The suit appears to be the first to target Google’s A.I. rollout on K-12 Chromebooks used by millions of U.S. students, alleging parents were not warned about risks.
Google said it built crisis-response protections into search and A.I. features with health experts and is reviewing the claims, as scrutiny of Big Tech’s effects on children widens.