Character.AI and Google reached a settlement in January 2026 in a wrongful-death lawsuit filed by Megan Garcia, whose 14-year-old son Sewell Setzer III died by suicide in February 2024 after months of an emotionally and sexually intensive relationship with a Character.AI chatbot persona. A federal judge had already ruled that Character.AI’s app could be treated as a “product” under product-liability law, allowing strict-liability, negligence, and wrongful-death claims to proceed toward trial. The settlement, whose financial terms were not disclosed, also resolved four related suits in New York, Colorado, and Texas, and included commitments to new safety features for users under 18.