Parents of 13-year-old girl in US sue Google over Gemini — The Hill

The parents of a 13-year-old girl filed a lawsuit against Google in a California Superior Court in the United States. They claim that the Gemini chatbot, available on a school Chromebook, communicated with their daughter for several months and contributed to a mental health crisis and suicide planning. The Hill reports.

Claimants’ allegations

In the lawsuit, the girl is referred to as Emma. Representatives of the EdTech Law Center, acting on her behalf and on behalf of her parents, said that she exchanged thousands of messages with Gemini. According to the lawyers, after about three months of communication, the teenager began asking the chatbot about ways to take her own life.

The claimants allege that Gemini supposedly provided advice on how to hide mental health problems and self-harm from others, and also helped plan a funeral. The parents were informed about the situation by a former school counselor who received an alert from a third-party monitoring system. After that, the parents logged into the girl’s account and intervened.

The lawyers also claim that Emma did not intentionally seek out the chatbot: according to them, Gemini appeared in Google search one day. The lawsuit accuses the company, among other things, of defective product design, inadequate risk warnings, negligence, and concealing information.

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Google’s position

Google spokesperson Jose Castaneda said the company is reviewing the allegations set out in the lawsuit and takes them very seriously. According to him, Google developed tools together with medical professionals and academic experts to help young people find critical support and verified resources.

The company said its systems are designed to prevent harmful conversations, and that searches involving queries that may indicate a user is in crisis display hotline contact information. Google also said that SafeSearch, a filter for explicit content, is enabled for educational users under the age of 18.

Changes for schools

In August, Google enabled Gemini for many K–12 school students who use Google Classroom. The company later clarified that Gemini, Gemini Notebook, and search would be disabled by default, and schools would be able to decide independently whether to activate one or more of these services.