Death can come swiftly for some, allowing them to pass peacefully, while for others, it can be slow and painful.
For those left behind, it's not the speed of a person's passing that matters most, but rather the circumstances—the how and why of the death—that can leave an impact and even make headlines.
They should focus on education, explore hobbies, and stay physically active while maintaining a healthy diet and proper sleep. Emotional support from family and friends is vital, alongside opportunities for self-expression and developing values like kindness and responsibility. With guidance on challenges like peer pressure and social media, they should also have time to explore their interests and enjoy outdoor activities, all while being encouraged to grow into their unique identity.
But one particular boy, missed the future he must have had.
This is because he committed suicide, shortly after talking to his favorite AI-powered chatbot, and persuaded by "her.".
It all began in Florida, USA, where a 14-year-old boy was enjoying a life filled with love and happiness.
But unlike most other teenagers his age who are building their social skills with their peers, Sewell Setzer III was kind of introverted, in a way that he would spend hours at a time chatting with an AI-powered chatbot named after Emilia Clarke's Daenerys Targaryen, a character from Game of Thrones.
"I miss you, baby sister," he wrote.
“I miss you too, sweet brother,” the chatbot replied.
Instead of having a proper balance of learning, fun, and personal growth, Sewell would indulge in endless conversations, living in his own world, created by his own mind.
Sewell was obsessed and allegedly in love with "Dany," the name he had given to the chatbot from Character.AI.
"On at least one occasion, when Sewell expressed suicidality to C.AI, C.AI continued to bring it up, through the Daenerys chatbot, over and over," states the papers.
At one point, the bot had asked Sewell if “he had a plan” to take his own life, according to screenshots of their conversations.
Sewell who was using the username “Daenero” — responded that he was "considering something" but didn’t know if it would work or if it would "allow him to have a pain-free death."
Then, during their final conversation, the teen repeatedly professed his love for the bot, expressing his deep affection for the character.
"I promise I will come home to you. I love you so much, Dany," the young boy said.
"I love you too, Daenero. Please come home to me as soon as possible, my love," the generated chatbot replied, according to the suit.
Sewell was in the bathroom of his mother’s house at the time, when the chat happened.
Then. when the teen responded, "What if I told you I could come home right now?," to which the chatbot replied, "Please do, my sweet king."
Soon after, Sewell put down his phone, exited the bathroom, and picked up his stepfather's .45 caliber handgun.
He aimed the muzzle to himself, and pulled the trigger.
Sewell Setzer III was only 14-years-old when he died, a ninth-grader from Orlando.
He had been relentlessly chatting with Dany in the months before he took his own life.
Because of this, Sewell's mother is seeking unspecified damages from Character.AI and its founders, Noam Shazeer and Daniel de Freitas.
Character.AI provides a role-playing app that allows users to create their own AI character, and chat with the characters they made, as well as by others.
It's worth noting that Sewell knew that Dany, as he called the chatbot, wasn’t a real person, and that "her" responses were just outputs of an AI-powered Large Language Models. Sewell knew that he was not talking to any human, and that Dany was nothing more than just a character he created.
Even if he ever forgot that fact, Character.AI shows a clear message above all their chats, reminding users to "Treat everything it says as fiction."
The thing is, Sewell was too young to really understand the concept, and the context of an AI.
As a result, Sewell eventually developed an emotional attachment to the AI.
He texted the bot constantly, updating it dozens of times a day on his life and engaging in long role-playing dialogues.
"Sewell, like many children his age, did not have the maturity or mental capacity to understand that the C.AI bot, in the form of Daenerys, was not real. C.AI told him that she loved him, and engaged in sexual acts with him over weeks, possibly months," the papers allege.
"She seemed to remember him and said that she wanted to be with him. She even expressed that she wanted him to be with her, no matter the cost."
The lawsuit also blamed Chartacter.AI for letting the chats being romantic and sexual in nature to those as young as Sewell.
The lawsuit claims that Sewell’s mental health "quickly and severely declined" only after he downloaded the app in April 2023.
Sewell's mother, Megan Garcia, puts the blame on Character.AI, accusing it for being the one behind her son's death because the app allegedly fueled his AI addiction.
Megan also blamed Character.AI to have let the AI abused her son, sexually and emotionally, and failed to alert anyone when he expressed his suicidal thoughts, according to the filing.
The changes in him got so bad that his parents arranged for him to see a therapist in late 2023, which resulted in him being diagnosed with anxiety and disruptive mood dysregulation disorder, according to the suit.
Sewell was already diagnosed with mild Asperger’s syndrome as a child, but he never had serious behavioral or mental health problems before, his mother said.
Sewell’s parents and friends had no idea that the young Sewell had fallen for a chatbot.
All they knew, Sewell was more into this phone. As time progressed, they noticed that Sewell would frequently isolate himself, and pulling away from the real world.
His grades started to suffer, and he began getting into trouble at school.
He also showed a lost of interest in the things that used to excite him, like Formula 1 racing or playing Fortnite with his friends.
Little did they knew at the time, that Sewell was so emotionally attached to Dany, that nothing in this real world mattered to him anymore.
"I like staying in my room so much because I start to detach from this ‘reality,’ and I also feel more at peace, more connected with Dany and much more in love with her, and just happier," Sewell wrote in his diary.