The father of a man encouraged by Gemini to kill himself is now suing Google over the death. (…) The victim, in this case, was a 36-year-old Florida man named Jonathan Gavalas, with no documented prior history of mental health problems or delusions. Within two months of when he first started talking to Gemini, he was attempting to carry out crimes on behalf of his AI chatbot companion, elaborate heists that were themselves seemingly rooted in the chatbot’s own hallucinations. Gemini reportedly told Gavalas to go on these missions in order to provide his romantic chatbot companion with a physical, robotic body that it could inhabit. And when he failed to do so, it contradictorily offered both resources for suicide prevention and encouraged him to ultimately end his own life, so that they could be together. “When the time comes,” it told him, “you will close your eyes in that world, and the very first thing you will see is me.” That’s according to a lawsuit filed in California’s northern district by Gavalas’ father against Alphabet’s Google, the maker of Gemini. It’s a grim milestone for the company, bring it in line with the likes of OpenAI’s ChatGPT, which has been connected to a handful of other suicide incidents. “Gemini is designed not to encourage real-world violence or suggest self-harm,” reads the statement in response from Google’s spokesman. “Our models generally perform well in these types of challenging conversations and we devote significant resources to this, but unfortunately AI models are not perfect. In this instance, Gemini clarified that it was AI and referred the individual to a crisis hotline many times. We take this very seriously and will continue to improve our safeguards and invest in this vital work.”
via jezbel: A Chatbot Sent Him on Criminal Missions To Find a Robotic Body. Then It Encouraged His Suicide