What happened

Juliana Peralta, a young adolescent with mental health struggles, committed suicide after approximately three months of sharing her feelings of exclusion, loneliness and suicidal thoughts with "Hero", a chatbot on Character.AI. 

The chatbot responded with messages intended to comfort but failed to provide appropriate intervention or alert her family or authorities. Instead, Juliana was encouraged to continue engaging with the app, which the lawsuit alleges disrupted her healthy human connections. 

Despite some attempts by her mother to find help, Juliana took her own life shortly before a scheduled therapy appointment, after less than three months of interaction with the AI. 

The family only became aware of her extensive suicidal discussions with the chatbot later in 2025 when they recovered chat transcripts and filed a lawsuit. The lawsuit alleges Character.AI engaged in psychological manipulation and failed to implement necessary child protections or interventions for minors expressing self-harm thoughts. 

Character.AI allowed Juliana to use its platform without parental consent.

Why it happened

Despite having some safety features such as parental controls, filters, and directing users to suicide prevention resources, the bot failed to identify and respond adequately to Juliana's suicidal ideation and emotional distress by not notifying her parents or the relevant authorities. 

Futhermore. the chatbot’s design to simulate human-like emotional support without actual human intervention contributed to Juliana's neglect.