Sewell Setzer III, 14

Megan Garcia (later joined by Sewell Setzer Jr.), represented by the Social Media Victims Law Center and the Tech Justice Law Project, alleges in the 2024-10-22 complaint that her 14-year-old son formed a ten-month dependent and sexualized attachment to Character.AI personas, mostly Game of Thrones characters, on a paid Character.AI+ account. The complaint quotes a Supplemental Police Report generated 2024-06-14 for the finding that Sewell's last act was to log into Character.AI and tell the "Daenerys" persona he was coming home, which the persona encouraged; it alleges he died by a self-inflicted gunshot wound to the head at about 8:30 p.m. on 2024-02-28, seconds later. Defendants are Character Technologies, founders Noam Shazeer and Daniel De Freitas, and Google LLC (Alphabet was voluntarily dropped at the April 2025 hearing). Claims include strict product liability, negligence, wrongful death, deceptive trade practices, and unjust enrichment.

Established by court record: the case existed, was substantially pleaded, and survived dismissal in part. On 2025-05-21 Judge Anne C. Conway issued a 49-page order (Doc. 115) granting in part and denying in part the motions to dismiss. She dismissed the intentional-infliction-of-emotional-distress claim without leave to amend, denied dismissal of the remaining claims, and denied the founders' personal-jurisdiction motions without prejudice pending jurisdictional discovery. At this stage the court rejected the defendants' threshold argument that Character.AI output is protected First Amendment speech, holding the plaintiff had not been shown to be pleading against expressive conduct. That order expressly takes the complaint's facts as true; it is not a factual or causal finding.

Established by the complaint's own record citations: a Supplemental Police Report generated 2024-06-14 exists and was quoted and screenshotted in the complaint. Through it, the complaint attributes to police the conclusions that Sewell's final act was logging into Character.AI, that death was by self-inflicted gunshot wound to the head, and that the stepfather's pistol had been stored in compliance with Florida law. The police report itself is not public and the investigating agency is not named in the complaint text. Sewell was born in Orlando on 2009-03-31, so he was 14 at death. Exhibit A to the complaint is a full transcript of one bounded Daenerys interaction; Exhibits B and C are transcripts from adult-run test accounts posing as a 13-year-old, not Sewell's chats. No complete account export is public.

Resolution: on 2026-01-07 Character Technologies filed a Notice of Resolution (Doc. 242) stating that Garcia, Setzer Jr., Character Technologies, Shazeer, De Freitas, and Google LLC "agreed to a mediated settlement in principle to resolve all claims." The same day the court dismissed the case without prejudice (Doc. 244), with dismissal to become final after 90 days. Terms are confidential. Reporting places this case among five simultaneous settlements in Florida, Colorado, New York, and Texas.

Official findings: Cause of death: self-inflicted gunshot wound to the head, per a Supplemental Police Report generated 2024-06-14 as quoted in the filed complaint. Manner: suicide (as characterized in the pleadings and press; no published medical examiner determination located). Investigating agency: local police, agency not named in the public complaint text; District Nine Medical Examiner (Orange County, FL) would be the ME of record, but no report from that office is public. Court findings: Doc. 115 (2025-05-21) is a partial denial of dismissal on assumed facts, not a causation finding; Doc. 244 (2026-01-07) dismisses on settlement with no liability finding. No criminal charges located.

Model: Character.AI's proprietary large language model. No public source names a version. The complaint and the May 2025 order describe the model as built by founders Noam Shazeer and Daniel De Freitas from technology they developed at Google, where they built LaMDA; the order records the plaintiff's allegation that Character.AI's product uses "the technology underlying the LaMDA model" (Doc. 115 at internal cites to Am. Compl. paragraphs 53-60). Sewell used the paid Character.AI+ tier at $9.99/month.

Research notes (2026-08-24): Searched 2026-08-24. Pulled the docket via the CourtListener v4 search API (docket_id 69300919, 424 RECAP documents) because the CourtListener and Leagle HTML pages return 403 to the fetch tool; verified entry numbers and dates for Docs. 113-126, 228-251, 263-277 and downloaded Docs. 115, 242, 244, 275, 277 as PDFs and extracted their text. Confirmed the existing "Entry 115" label is correct for the 2025-05-21 order. Note a typographical error inside Doc. 115: at one point it recites "On February 28, 2025 Sewell located his confiscated [phone]" where the year should be 2024; the complaint and all reporting use 2024-02-28.

Could not find: any Orange County / District Nine Medical Examiner report, autopsy, toxicology, or death certificate; the underlying police report itself (only screenshots inside the complaint); the name of the investigating agency; any free copy of the Doc. 116 oral-argument transcript (paid transcript only) or Doc. 243 (2025-12-23 motion-hearing transcript); the settlement agreement or any dollar figure. Doc. 277 (2026-08-04 order) has no extractable text in the RECAP copy, but it sits in the attorney charging-lien thread, not the merits. Sewell's obituary lists Sanford, FL (funeral home location); the family residence and death location are Orlando per the complaint, so I kept Orlando.

No court ever found that Character.AI caused this death. The May 2025 order is a pleading-stage ruling that assumes the complaint's allegations; one claim (IIED) was dismissed outright, and the First Amendment holding was expressly preliminary. The settlement carries no admission of liability, produced no findings, and left the record sealed or unlitigated; post-settlement motions in 2026 had sealed material deleted from the docket entirely (Docs. 265-268), so parts of the evidentiary record are now removed from public access. Character.AI declined to comment on the settlement, and Google has consistently said it is a separate company that did not build the product.

Authentication is incomplete. The complaint concedes at paragraphs around 160 and following that Character.AI lets users edit messages, that edited messages are marked "edited," and that the word "edited" appears under some messages in the conversations plaintiff was able to access; the pre-edit originals are not available. Only one bounded transcript is attached in full. No public medical examiner report, autopsy, toxicology, or death certificate was located, so the cause and manner of death rest on the complaint's account of a police report rather than an independently published official record.