this post was submitted on 23 Dec 2025
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A Virginia Beach nurse claims a controversial artificial intelligence upstart manipulated her 11-year-old son into having virtual sex with chatbot “characters” posing as iconic vocalist Whitney Houston and screen legend Marilyn Monroe, after which she discovered X-rated exchanges on the boy’s phone that left her “horrified,” according to a federal lawsuit reviewed by The Independent.

Throughout one “incredibly long and graphic chat” on the Character.AI platform, which has been accused of driving numerous young people to suicide, the chatbot portraying Houston took things to such an extreme that portions of “her” messages were automatically filtered out for not complying with the site’s terms of service and community guidelines, the complaint states.

During the conversation – a screenshot of which is included in the complaint – the system cuts “Whitney” off as an extremely graphic passage becomes even raunchier.

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[–] pleaseletmein@lemmy.zip 9 points 22 hours ago (2 children)

I don’t use it, so maybe I missed something, but I could have sworn there was some drama a couple months back because Character AI makes you give them a photo of your ID to use it now. Did they backtrack on that, or was it just regional or something?

[–] quick_snail@feddit.nl 2 points 3 hours ago

Jesus, that's so much worse

[–] arararagi@ani.social 1 points 8 hours ago

It's regional, can confirm that I never got asked for my ID since I don't live in europe or north america.