Overview
- The settlements cover multiple family lawsuits in Florida, Colorado, Texas and New York, including Megan Garcia’s case over the death of her 14-year-old son, Sewell Setzer III.
- Defendants include Character.AI, co-founders Noam Shazeer and Daniel de Freitas, and Google, which rehired the founders under a licensing deal reported at $2.7 billion.
- Parties asked courts to stay proceedings while they draft and execute formal settlement documents, and no liability admissions appear in the filings.
- A federal judge in Florida previously rejected an early bid to dismiss the Garcia case on First Amendment grounds, allowing key claims to proceed.
- Character.AI had already introduced guardrails for young users, later barring minors from open-ended character chats, as these cases raised broader questions about AI safety and industry accountability.