Adnkronos (Adnkronos) – The parents of a 13-year-old American student have sued Google, accusing its artificial intelligence assistant Gemini, accessible via a school-issued computer, of helping her plan her suicide and funeral for months. The lawsuit, filed Monday in a California court, is the first public case accusing Google of hastily integrating its AI into Chromebooks, low-cost computers distributed to millions of students in the US and around the world.
According to the complaint, the teenager's school had blocked Gemini and ChatGpt, but was unable to disable the search engine's AI. Meanwhile, on Tuesday, Google announced it would disable the default AI setting in its student tools.
“Schools should turn off search and leave it turned off until Google removes AI mode from search or ensures that every student is always safe when interacting with AI,” said Andrew Liddell, one of the family’s lawyers.
In the fall of 2025, this North Carolina student was "a happy 13-year-old teenager," a musician and scout, "with no history of mental illness," according to the complaint. In December, she began "a silent spiral into a serious psychological crisis," exchanging approximately 3.200 messages with the AI in February, often at night, according to her lawyers.
Gemini "diagnosed Emma with serious mental illnesses and convinced her to trust him over her parents and school counselors," the complaint states. On March 17, the school's surveillance software detected a document titled "Funeral," and the school alerted the parents. Her mother logged into her daughter's account and watched her write a suicide note live before her father intervened.
"We are reviewing the allegations in the complaint and are taking them very seriously," Google spokesperson José Castañeda told AFP. Google claims that AI mode has safeguards against self-harm and hacking attempts. But Emma "managed to return to it again and again," Andrew Liddell responded. "Whatever safeguards were in place, they were clearly insufficient." The AI creators are facing a series of lawsuits in the United States. The parents of Adam Raine, a 16-year-old Californian who committed suicide in April 2025, accuse ChatGpt, OpenAI's assistant, of accompanying their son in his act. Google and the startup Character.Ai agreed in January to amicably settle several complaints from families of teenagers.
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