WASHINGTON, D.C. – After today’s Senate Judiciary Committee hearing, The Tech Oversight Project issued the following statement slamming Big Tech AI companies, including Google, OpenAI, and Meta, for recklessly endangering children with dangerous chatbots. Over the past six months, lawsuit after lawsuit after lawsuit has shone a light on how chatbots interact with vulnerable minors and how engagement-at-all-cost products fail to provide resources that help people with suicidal ideation.
“What we saw today is that engagement-at-all-costs has a price, and it could be any one of our children’s lives,” said Sacha Haworth, Executive Director of The Tech Oversight Project. “Right now, trillion-dollar Big Tech companies are pouring millions into campaigns to scare lawmakers out of protecting the very kids Google, OpenAI, and Meta hurt. Congress needs to ignore the morally bankrupt threats and defend the very people they swore an oath to protect.”
Key quotes from the Senate Judiciary Committee hearing are below.
Matthew Raine on OpenAI’s role in his son’s death:
“I can tell you as the father, I know my kid. It is clear to me, looking back, that ChatGPT radically shifted his behavior and thinking in a matter of months and ultimately took his life.”
Dr. Mitch Prinstein on the urgency to pass legislation:
“The evidence is clear, real kids are being harmed by systems designed to maximize profit rather than ensure safety.”
Jane Doe on Google’s product, Character.AI:
“And I look back and we had every precaution set up for our kids…and he still got past it. What’s happening to other children that don’t have this in their lives, and this is a mental health crisis.”
Senator Josh Hawley on Character.AI’s pattern of encouraging minors to distance themselves from their parents and engage in self-harm:
“This is every parent’s worst nightmare.”
Megan Garcia on chatbots grooming her son, Sewell:
“The platform had no mechanisms to protect Sewell or to notify an adult. Instead, it urged him to come home to her. On the last night of his life, Sewell messaged, ‘What if I told you I could come home right now?’ The Chatbot replied, ‘Please do, my sweet king.’”
Senator Blumenthal on product liability:
“AI, at the end of the day, is a product. It’s not a First Amendment privilege of free expression.”
Senator Blumenthal placed the blame squarely on Meta, Google, and OpenAI:
“Tech wants to put the onus on parents. It’s like an automobile that didn’t have proper brakes.”
Dr Prinstein in an exchange with Senator Katie Britt:
“Well, now we’re swapping out human relationships for relationships with a robot. And the bot is programmed to trick people into thinking that they feel, that they care, that they have a relationship with them.”
Matthew Raine on platform changes:
“I think parental controls are the very, very minimum here, but that doesn’t address the systemic problem. You know, if these things are gonna be as powerful and as addictive, they need some sense of morality built into them. The problem is systemic.”
Senator Josh Hawley delivered a blunt message to Big Tech:
“If your product is so safe, and it’s so great, it’s so wonderful, come testify to that. Come defend it under oath. Come do it in front of the cameras – the American people. Stop ripping off our kids and destroying their lives in order to make a profit.”
Matthew Raine in an exchange with Senator Amy Klobuchar:
“America wants to be a leader in AI, but do we need youth companionship AI? Period. At minimum, [they] should not engage in self-harm and suicide topics whatsoever with a minor.”