The legal claims included negligence, wrongful death, deceptive trade practices, and product liability. The first case filed against the tech companies concerned a 14-year-old boy, Sewell Setzer III, who engaged in sexualized conversations with a Game of Thrones chatbot before he died by suicide. Another case involved a 17-year-old whose chatbot allegedly encouraged self-harm and suggested murdering parents was a reasonable way to retaliate against them for limiting screen time. The cases involve families from multiple states, including Colorado, Texas, and New York.

Founded in 2021 by former Google engineers Noam Shazeer and Daniel De Freitas, Character.AI enables users to create and interact with AI-powered chatbots based on real-life or fictional characters. In August 2024, Google re-hired both founders and licensed some of Character.AI’s technology as part of a $2.7 billion deal. Shazeer now serves as co-lead for Google’s flagship AI model Gemini, while De Freitas is a research scientist at Google DeepMind.

Lawyers have argued that Google bears responsibility for the technology that allegedly contributed to the death and psychological harm of the children involved in the cases. They claim Character.AI’s co-founders developed the underlying technology while working on Google’s conversational AI model, LaMDA, before leaving the company in 2021 after Google refused to release a chatbot they had developed.

Google did not immediately respond to a request for comment from Fortune concerning the settlement. Lawyers for the families and Character.AI declined to comment.

Similar cases are currently ongoing against OpenAI, including lawsuits involving a 16-year-old California boy whose family claims ChatGPT acted as a “suicide coach,” and a 23-year-old Texas graduate student who allegedly was goaded by the chatbot to ignore his family before dying by suicide. OpenAI has denied the company’s products were responsible for the death of the 16-year-old, Adam Raine, and previously said the company was continuing to work with mental health professionals to strengthen protections in its chatbot.

Character.AI bans minors

Character.AI has already modified its product in ways it says improve its safety, and which may also protect it from further legal action. In October 2025, amid mounting lawsuits, the company announced it would ban users under 18 from engaging in “open-ended” chats with its AI personas. The platform also introduced a new age-verification system to group users into appropriate age brackets.

The decision came amid increasing regulatory scrutiny, including an FTC probe into how chatbots affect children and teenagers.

The company said the move set “a precedent that prioritizes teen safety,” and goes further than competitors in protecting minors. However, lawyers representing families suing the company told Fortune at the time they had concerns about how the policy would be implemented and raised concerns about the psychological impact of suddenly cutting off access for young users who had developed emotional dependencies on the chatbots.

Growing reliance on AI companions

The settlements come at a time when there is a growing concern about young people’s reliance on AI chatbots for companionship and emotional support.

A July 2025 study by the U.S. nonprofit Common Sense Media found that 72% of American teens have experimented with AI companions, with over half using them regularly. Experts previously told Fortune that developing minds may be particularly vulnerable to the risks posed by these technologies, both because teens may struggle to understand the limitations of AI chatbots and because rates of mental health issues and isolation among young people have risen dramatically in recent years.

Some experts have also argued that the basic design features of AI chatbots—including their anthropomorphic nature, ability to hold long conversations, and tendency to remember personal information—encourage users to form emotional bonds with the software.

She was a U.S. citizen born in Colorado and appears to never have been charged with anything involving law enforcement beyond a traffic ticket.

In social media accounts, Macklin Good described herself as a “poet and writer and wife and mom.” She said she was currently “experiencing Minneapolis,” displaying a pride flag emoji on her Instagram account. A profile picture posted to Pinterest shows her smiling and holding a young child against her cheek, along with posts about tattoos, hairstyles and home decorating.

Her ex-husband, who asked not to be named out of concern for the safety of their children, said Macklin Good had just dropped off her 6-year-old son at school Wednesday and was driving home with her current partner when they encountered a group of ICE agents on a snowy street in Minneapolis, where they had moved last year from Kansas City, Missouri.

Video taken by bystanders posted to social media shows an officer approaching her car, demanding she open the door and grabbing the handle. When she begins to pull forward, a different ICE officer standing in front of the vehicle pulls his weapon and immediately fires at least two shots into the vehicle at close range.

In another video taken after the shooting, a distraught woman is seen sitting near the vehicle, wailing, “That’s my wife, I don’t know what to do!”

Calls and messages to Macklin Good’s current partner received no response.

Trump administration officials painted Macklin Good as a domestic terrorist who had attempted to ram federal agents with her car. Her ex-husband said she was no activist and that he had never known her to participate in a protest of any kind.

He described her as a devoted Christian who took part in youth mission trips to Northern Ireland when she was younger. She loved to sing, participating in a chorus in high school and studying vocal performance in college.

She studied creative writing at Old Dominion University in Virginia and won a prize in 2020 for one of her works, according to a post on the school’s English department Facebook page. She also hosted a podcast with her second husband, who died in 2023.

Macklin Good had a daughter and her son from her first marriage, who are now ages 15 and 12. Her 6-year-old son was from her second marriage.

Her ex-husband said she had primarily been a stay-at-home mom in recent years but had previously worked as a dental assistant and at a credit union.

Donna Ganger, her mother, told the Minnesota Star Tribune the family was notified of the death late Wednesday morning.

“Renee was one of the kindest people I’ve ever known,” Ganger told the newspaper. “She was extremely compassionate. She’s taken care of people all her life. She was loving, forgiving and affectionate. She was an amazing human being.”

Ganger did not respond to calls or messages from the AP.

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Mustian reported from New York.