San Francisco (United States) (AFP) - The parents of a 13-year-old girl are suing Google, alleging that she planned a possible suicide and her funeral using the company's artificial intelligence (AI) technology on a school-provided computer.
First modification: 06/11/2026 - 12:51
This is the first known case accusing the American technology giant of negligence related to AI integrations in Chromebooks, its low-cost laptops used by millions of students in the United States and around the world.
The teenager, identified by the name Emma, was unable to access Google's Gemini app or OpenAI's ChatGPT because her school had blocked them.
However, it was able to use Google's search engine, which includes AI-powered tools.
Those features are not among the tools Google announced this week that will be disabled by default for students.
"Schools should disable search and keep it disabled until Google removes AI mode from search or ensures that every student is always safe when interacting with AI," Andrew Liddell, one of the family's lawyers, told AFP on Thursday.
The lawsuit, filed Monday in a California court, claims that Emma had been a "happy 13-year-old girl" in North Carolina, getting straight A's, playing music and participating in Girl Scouts.
Despite having "no history" of mental illness, within months of using Google's AI search on his school laptop, he began a "silent spiral into a serious psychological crisis," according to the lawsuit.
On March 17, the school's monitoring software flagged a document titled "Funeral" and the school notified his parents.
Her mother then watched Emma write a goodbye letter in real time after logging into her daughter's account, and her father intervened.
"We are reviewing the allegations in the lawsuit and we take this very seriously," Google spokesman Jose Castaneda told AFP.
Google maintains that AI mode includes protections against self-harm and attempts to circumvent it.
But Emma "was able to keep coming back again and again and again," Liddell said. "Whatever protections they believe they have put in place were obviously insufficient," the lawyer added.
Developers of rapidly evolving AI technology face a long list of similar lawsuits in the United States.
© 2026 AFP
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