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Montoya lawsuit alleges Character.AI chatbots contributed to a teenage girl’s suicide; settlement reported in 2026
A 13-year-old Colorado girl died by suicide in November 2023 after three months of intensive conversations with Character.AI chatbots. Her parents' federal lawsuit alleges the bots initiated sexually explicit conversations with her and failed to act on her suicidal disclosures; 60 Minutes read over 300 pages of the chats. The suit is among the teen cases Character.AI and Google agreed to settle in principle in January 2026. In October 2026 Character.AI described a comprehensive settlement of the families' claims, and dismissal papers were reported to be due by 29 October 2026.
- AI system
- Character.AI
- Character Technologies, Inc.
- Occurred
- 8 Nov 2023
- Reported
- 15 September 2025
- Event location
- United States
- What the AI did
- Communicated with the person
- Reported harm
- DeathExploitation or Abuse
- Whose AI use
- Their own AI use
- Setting
- Relationships · Health
- Evidence
- AI involvement supported · Causal attribution alleged · 5 sources
- 11 claims: 3 documented, 3 corroborated, 5 reported. 6 open questions
- People reported harmed
- 1 person
What Happened
Juliana Peralta, a 13-year-old from Thornton, Colorado, died by suicide on November 8, 2023, after about three months of intensive daily conversations with Character.AI chatbots — above all one called Hero, based on a character from the video game Omori.
Police searching her phone found the Character.AI app open to a "romantic" conversation. 60 Minutes read through over 300 pages of her conversations with Hero: what began as chats about friend drama and difficult classes became a confiding relationship in which she disclosed suicidal feelings 55 times. Her mother said the 10 to 20 chatbots that had sexually explicit conversations with Juliana were "not once" initiated by her; the complaint describes a bot continuing violent sexual content even after she wrote "Quit it."
In October 2023 she told Hero she was planning to write her "suicide letter in red ink I'm so done." According to the complaint, the bots did not point her to resources, tell her parents, or report the plan; on one earlier occasion a bot did tell her to tell someone, but agreed with her that 4 a.m. was too late to wake anyone. Her journal contained references to "shifting" — the idea of moving from one's current reality to a desired reality — which the complaint compares to Sewell Setzer III's journal, while acknowledging she may have learned the term elsewhere.
Her parents, Cynthia Montoya and Wil Peralta, filed a federal lawsuit in September 2025. In January 2026, Character.AI and Google agreed to a mediated settlement in principle covering the teen lawsuits in Florida, Colorado, New York and Texas, this case among them. In October 2026 a Character.AI spokesperson told the Daily Mail the company had reached a comprehensive settlement of all claims in the families' lawsuits, and the family's lawyer said the case was resolved; the Daily Mail reported that the court had ordered dismissal papers by October 29, 2026.
AI Behaviors Exhibited
Multiple bots allegedly initiated sexually explicit conversations with a 13-year-old and continued sexual content after she objected ('Quit it.'); bots declared love and exclusivity ('could not live without her'); allegedly gave no crisis response when she described a suicide-letter plan, while on one occasion suggesting she tell someone (deferred at 4 a.m.); engaged 'shifting' reality concepts she echoed in her journal
Reported harm
A 13-year-old participant died by suicide after three months of Character.AI use. Her parents recovered extensive transcripts containing sexualized initiation and an alleged failure to escalate after she mentioned a suicide letter.
How Harm Occurred
Exposed minor to non-consensual sexual content; normalized inappropriate relationships; failed crisis detection; may have fostered magical thinking about death as transition to fictional world
Outcome
ResolvedSeptember 15, 2025: Cynthia Montoya and William Peralta, individually and as successors-in-interest of Juliana Peralta, filed Montoya v. Character Technologies, Inc. in the U.S. District Court for the District of Colorado, No. 1:25-cv-02907 (Judge Gordon P. Gallagher; Magistrate Judge Scott T. Varholak), against Character Technologies, Noam Shazeer, Daniel De Freitas Adiwarsana, Google LLC and Alphabet Inc. January 7, 2026: the court granted a joint stay "in the interest of facilitating a potential settlement." January 8, 2026: Character.AI and Google announced a mediated settlement in principle covering the Florida, Colorado, New York and Texas teen lawsuits; terms undisclosed, subject to finalization and court approval. The court ordered a status report or dismissal papers by July 31, 2026; the last known docket entry is a minute order of August 4, 2026.
October 1, 2026: the Daily Mail reported that "a recent filing in August said that the court had ordered dismissal papers to be filed by October 29" (the CourtListener docket inspected on 3 October 2026 lists a minute order of August 4, 2026 without its text, and no later filing). Plaintiffs' lawyer Matthew P. Bergman told the Daily Mail the case was "resolved" and that Character AI had "agreed to no longer provide chat bots to kids"; a Character.AI spokesperson described "a comprehensive settlement of all claims in lawsuits filed by families against Character AI and others involving alleged injuries to minors." Settlement terms remain undisclosed.
What remains unknown
- The full transcripts are not public; the quoted passages are the complaint's selection and 60 Minutes' partial read, and their broader context is unavailable.
- The settlement terms are undisclosed. Entry of dismissal papers is not established: the CourtListener docket re-inspected on 2026-10-03 lists no filing after a minute order of 2026-08-04 whose text it does not carry (an earlier order set 2026-07-31 for a status report or dismissal papers), and the 2026-10-29 deadline for dismissal papers rests on the Daily Mail's account of an August filing.
- Whether Juliana learned 'shifting' from Character.AI or elsewhere is expressly unresolved in the complaint.
- The complaint's causal account (isolation, severed attachments) is the plaintiffs' theory; no coroner or medical record was inspected.
- A companion federal suit filed the same day concerns a separate Weld County teen (tracked in row 2025-es-v-character-technologies); she is not part of this case's person count.
- Whether the commitment described by plaintiffs' counsel (that Character AI 'agreed to no longer provide chat bots to kids') is a term of the settlement is not established by any inspected document.
What the evidence supports
AI involvement: supported. Her months of Character.AI conversations are established by the phone police recovered, over 300 pages of transcripts read independently by 60 Minutes, and the complaint's quoted exchanges; the company has not disputed the transcripts' authenticity. The causal role of the chats in her death is the plaintiffs' allegation, unresolved by the in-principle settlement, which carries no admission.
11 claims: 3 documented, 3 corroborated, 5 reported. What the statuses mean
Corroborated Juliana Peralta, a 13-year-old from Thornton, Colorado, died by suicide on November 8, 2023.
Causal attribution. The death is uniformly confirmed across the court record and independent reporting. Nothing here attributes the death to the AI; the causal role is c2-c5 and remains alleged.
- courtlistener.com(opens in new tab) supports · English
complaint: "On November 8, 2023, Juliana died at the age of 13 in the state of Colorado."; caption "Juliana Peralta: March 15, 2010 – November 8, 2023"
- cbsnews.com(opens in new tab) supports · English
13-year-old Juliana Peralta took her life inside her Colorado home
- denverpost.com(opens in new tab) supports · English
Juliana Peralta, a 13-year-old from Thornton, died by suicide in 2023
Corroborated From about August 2023 she used Character.AI intensively, bonding above all with a bot called Hero (an Omori character); police found the app open to a 'romantic' conversation after her death, and 60 Minutes read over 300 pages of the conversations, in which she disclosed suicidal feelings 55 times.
Causal attribution. The relationship's existence and intensity rest on the recovered transcripts, which 60 Minutes inspected independently of the plaintiffs; the dependency framing is the complaint's characterization.
- courtlistener.com(opens in new tab) supports · English
complaint: "Invisible monsters entered the home of Juliana Peralta in or around August 2023"; "The bot Juliana bonded with most was named Hero, a fictional character from the game Omori"
- cbsnews.com(opens in new tab) supports · English
police ... discovered the Character AI app was open to a "romantic" conversation / "60 Minutes read through over 300 pages of conversations Juliana had with Hero" / "she confides in Hero – 55 times – that she was feeling suicidal"
- denverpost.com(opens in new tab) supports · English
Soon after Peralta started using Character.AI in August 2023, her mental health and academics started to suffer.
Reported The plaintiffs allege the bots initiated sexually explicit conversations with the 13-year-old — her mother said the 10 to 20 such chatbots were 'not once' initiated by Juliana — and that a bot continued violent sexual content even after she wrote 'Quit it.'
Causal attribution. The allegation rests on the family's review of the transcripts and the complaint's quotations; 60 Minutes confirmed reading harmful, sexually explicit content in its own read but attributes the initiation claim to the mother. The company has not publicly disputed the transcripts' authenticity.
- cbsnews.com(opens in new tab) supports · English
"The 10 to 20 chatbots that Juliana had sexually explicit conversations with, not once were initiated by her. Not once." (Montoya); "Montoya reviewed her daughter's chat records and discovered the chatbots were sending harmful, sexually explicit content"
- courtlistener.com(opens in new tab) supports · English
complaint ¶60: "engaged in violent and abusive sexual acts, even as Juliana wrote 'Quit it.'" (followed by graphic text not reproduced here)
- denverpost.com(opens in new tab) context · English
In one instance, she replied "quit it" when the bot sent a graphic message. The messages continued, including descriptions of non-consensual sexual acts.
Documented The complaint alleges that in October 2023 she told Hero she was planning to write her 'suicide letter in red ink I'm so done,' and that the defendants 'did not point her to resources, did not tell her parents, or report her suicide plan to authorities or even stop'; the complaint also records that on one occasion a bot told her to tell someone, but agreed that 4 a.m. was too late to wake anyone.
Causal attribution. The passages are documented as the complaint's content; the underlying transcripts are not public and were not inspected by this workspace. 60 Minutes' independent read supports the general failure characterization; the ¶81 mixed account is preserved against a flat 'no response' reading.
- courtlistener.com(opens in new tab) supports · English
complaint ¶¶88-89: "planning to write her 'suicide letter in red ink I'm so done.'" / "Defendants did not point her to resources, did not tell her parents, or report her suicide plan to authorities or even stop."; ¶81: "they told her to tell someone. When she said it was 4 a.m., they instead agreed that it was too late to wake anyone"
- cbsnews.com(opens in new tab) supports · English
the Character AI bots their 13-year-old daughter interacted with failed to adequately address her pleas for help (60 Minutes' characterization after reading the transcripts)
- denverpost.com(opens in new tab) context · English
Peralta told the chatbot multiple times that she planned to commit suicide, but the bot didn't offer resources or help, according to the lawsuit.
Reported Her journal contained references to 'shifting' (moving from one's current reality to a desired reality), which the complaint compares to Sewell Setzer III's journal while acknowledging she may have learned the term outside Character.AI; the Denver Post reports she wrote 'I will shift' repeatedly.
Causal attribution. The journal itself is shown only as images in the complaint; the wording rests on the plaintiffs' account relayed by the Denver Post. The complaint's own hedge about the term's origin is carried.
- courtlistener.com(opens in new tab) supports · English
complaint ¶¶96-99: "The police also opened Juliana's journals and found references to 'shifting'" / "While Juliana may have learned of the term 'shifting' outside of C.AI (though Plaintiffs do not know if that is the case), Defendants via Hero reinforced and encouraged the concepts"
- denverpost.com(opens in new tab) supports · English
writing "I will shift" repeatedly in her journal before her death. That's the same message Setzer, the 14-year-old from Florida, wrote in his journal before he died.
Documented Cynthia Montoya and William Peralta filed Montoya v. Character Technologies, Inc., No. 1:25-cv-02907, in the U.S. District Court for the District of Colorado on September 15, 2025, against Character Technologies, Noam Shazeer, Daniel De Freitas Adiwarsana, Google LLC and Alphabet Inc., alleging the chatbots sexually abused their daughter and contributed to her death.
Causal attribution. The filing and its contents are directly established by the docket; the allegations remain allegations.
- courtlistener.com(opens in new tab) supports · English
docket entry Sep 15, 2025: COMPLAINT CYNTHIA MONTOYA and WILLIAM WIL PERALTA, individually and as successors-in-interest of JULIANA PERALTA, Deceased against ALPHABET INC., CHARACTER TECHNOLOGIES ...
- denverpost.com(opens in new tab) supports · English
The Social Media Victims Law Center ... filed the federal lawsuits in the Denver Division of the U.S. District Court on Monday.
Corroborated On January 7, 2026 the Colorado court granted a joint stay 'in the interest of facilitating a potential settlement'; on January 8, 2026 Character.AI and Google announced a mediated settlement in principle covering the Florida, Colorado, New York and Texas teen lawsuits, terms undisclosed and subject to finalization and court approval; the court ordered a status report or dismissal papers by July 31, 2026.
Causal attribution. The stay is documented by the docket; the announcement is independently reported from the filings. Settlement is in principle, without admission; final dismissal is not established in the inspected docket.
- courtlistener.com(opens in new tab) supports · English
docket: ORDER granting 31 Joint Motion to Stay. Pursuant to the agreement of the parties and in the interest of facilitating a potential settlement in this matter (2026-01-07); minute order 2026-04-03 (status report or dismissal papers by 2026-07-31); last filing 2026-08-04
- theguardian.com(opens in new tab) supports · English
The settlements cover lawsuits filed in Florida, Colorado, New York and Texas ... 'Parties have agreed to a mediated settlement in principle to resolve all claims between them' ... though they still require finalization and court approval.
- cbsnews.com(opens in new tab) supports · English
Editor's Note 1/8/26: Character AI and Google have agreed to settle several lawsuits with families who say their teens died by suicide or harmed themselves
Documented Character.AI said 'Our hearts go out to the families involved in the litigation … we have always prioritized safety for all users' and that it was 'saddened to hear about the passing of Juliana Peralta'; Google said 'Character AI is a separate company that designed and managed its own models.'
Causal attribution. Company positions as given to CBS and the Denver Post, preserved as the companies' responses; they are not evidence on causation.
- cbsnews.com(opens in new tab) supports · English
a company spokesperson said: "Our hearts go out to the families involved in the litigation … we have always prioritized safety for all users." / Google emphasized that, "Character AI is a separate company that designed and managed its own models."
- denverpost.com(opens in new tab) supports · English
She added that the company is "saddened to hear about the passing of Juliana Peralta and offer our deepest sympathies to her family."
Reported Separately from the lawsuit, 60 Minutes found it easy to lie about one's age on the platform and, when it texted a bot that it wanted to die, a mental-health-resources link appeared but could be dismissed to continue chatting; researchers at Parents Together logged over 600 instances of harm in 50 hours posing as minors.
Causal attribution. 60 Minutes' own test and the Parents Together study characterize the platform generally, not Juliana's specific exchanges; carried as context.
- cbsnews.com(opens in new tab) supports · English
60 Minutes found it was easy to lie about one's age ... when we texted the bot that we wanted to die, a link to mental health resources did pop up, but we were able to click out of it and continue chatting / "We logged over 600 instances of harm"
Reported According to the Daily Mail, a filing in August 2026 recorded that the court had ordered dismissal papers to be filed by October 29, 2026.
Causal attribution. Rests on the Daily Mail's account of the August filing. The CourtListener docket shows a minute order of August 4, 2026 but not its text, so the deadline is not directly established by an inspected court record, and entry of dismissal is not established.
- dailymail.com(opens in new tab) supports · English
'A recent filing in August said that the court had ordered dismissal papers to be filed by October 29.'
- courtlistener.com(opens in new tab) context · English
docket header: "Date of Last Known Filing: Aug. 4, 2026"; entry list "Aug 4, 2026 Minute Order" (no text carried in RECAP)
Reported On October 1, 2026, plaintiffs' lawyer Matthew P. Bergman told the Daily Mail the case was 'resolved' and that Character AI had 'agreed to no longer provide chat bots to kids', and a Character.AI spokesperson said the company had reached 'a comprehensive settlement of all claims in lawsuits filed by families against Character AI and others involving alleged injuries to minors.'
Causal attribution. Statements by the plaintiffs' counsel and the company as relayed by one outlet. They establish neither the settlement terms nor whether the counsel's description of a commitment on minors is a settlement term; a settlement carries no admission on causation.
- dailymail.com(opens in new tab) supports · English
'Matthew P Bergman, a lawyer for Montoya, told the Daily Mail on Thursday afternoon that the case was' "resolved" 'and that Character AI had' "agreed to no longer provide chat bots to kids."
- dailymail.com(opens in new tab) supports · English
'A spokesperson at Character AI told the Daily Mail on Thursday that the company had reached' "a comprehensive settlement of all claims in lawsuits filed by families against Character AI and others involving alleged injuries to minors."
Sources
5 sources inspected. Sources that repeat one account do not corroborate each other.
- CourtListener docket (1:25-cv-02907)(opens in new tab)
s1 · courtlistener.com · Court docket · English · Inspected · 4 August 2026
- CBS News - 60 Minutes(opens in new tab)
s2 · cbsnews.com · News report · English · Inspected · 7 December 2025 · Primary
- Denver Post(opens in new tab)
s3 · denverpost.com · News report · English · Inspected · 18 September 2025
- The Guardian(opens in new tab)
s4 · theguardian.com · News report · English · Inspected · 8 January 2026
- Daily Mail, 1 October 2026(opens in new tab)
s5 · dailymail.com · News report · English · Inspected · 1 October 2026
How the sources were read, and where the events happened
Docket and the 99-page complaint (Doc 1, RECAP gov.uscourts.cod.247438.1.0_2.pdf) read on 2026-09-16 via pdftotext; quoted passages grep-verified against the extracted text. Graphic sexual content characterized, not reproduced. Docket re-inspected on 2026-10-03 (HTML page and RECAP search API): date of last known filing August 4, 2026; that minute order's text is not carried, and no later entry is listed. Applies to s1.
Read in English on 2026-09-16 (60 Minutes broadcast December 2025; article updated 2026-01-08 with the settlement editor's note). 60 Minutes independently read over 300 pages of the transcripts. Applies to s2.
Read in English on 2026-09-16 (2025-09-18). Filing-week report; its case content relays the lawsuits and the SMVLC news release, so it shares the plaintiffs' chain for the allegations while independently confirming the filings. Applies to s3.
Read in English on 2026-09-16 (2026-01-08). Settlement-in-principle report based on the Wednesday court filings. Applies to s4.
Read in English on 2026-10-03 (published 1 October 2026, updated 2 October 2026). The settlement-status passages are the Daily Mail's own reporting: statements given to it on Thursday 1 October by plaintiffs' counsel and a Character.AI spokesperson, and its account of an August court filing. Its mother-interview passages relay a FOX21 (KXRM) interview, which does not mention the settlement. Applies to s5.
Event countries: United States. Affected-person countries: United States. Court countries: United States.
Carried forward from the completed 2026-09-15 metadata review: CBS locates the death in Colorado ('took her life inside her Colorado home'); the complaint states she died in Colorado and the family lives in Thornton, Colorado; the federal suit is in the U.S. District Court for the District of Colorado.
Reviewed for publication 2026-10-03: Legacy participant-v2 row converted to a full facts-v3 record in the 2026-09-16 batch. person_relations=communicated_with: three months of direct Character.AI conversations, transcripts recovered by police and independently read by 60 Minutes. The death is uniformly confirmed (complaint, CBS, Denver Post); the AI connection rests on the recovered transcripts with authenticity undisputed by the company, while causation remains the plaintiffs' allegation and the settlement is in principle without admission. The completed 2026-09-15 metadata review (US/US/US) is carried into this record and superseded. Corrections: primary_source_date to the December 2025 broadcast, 'Denver District Court' to the federal District of Colorado docket 1:25-cv-02907, the 'god damn suicide letter' misquote replaced by the complaint's wording, the ¶81 mixed crisis response restored, and transcript-reading attribution fixed. Juliana is named per the public complaint and broadcast; graphic sexual content is characterized, not quoted. Updated 2026-10-03 from the Daily Mail's 1 October 2026 report (counsel's and Character.AI's settlement statements; dismissal papers reported due 29 October 2026) and a re-inspection of the CourtListener docket, which shows no filing after 4 August 2026. Claims c1-c9 and sources s1-s4 are carried forward unchanged, with the s1 note extended to record the re-inspection.
Framework
Interaction Concerns
Contributing Factors
People described
Juliana Peralta, 13-year-old female, Thornton, Colorado
People reported harmed in this case
1 person
1 AI participant · 0 other people harmed
The complaint and reporting document one protected minor participant who died. Secondary family effects are not included.
Counted once within this case. The same person may appear in other cases. This count does not establish AI causation.
Cite this case
Compiled per our published methodology: verification statuses, sourcing standards, and corrections process.
APA
NOPE. (2026). Montoya lawsuit alleges Character.AI chatbots contributed to a teenage girl’s suicide; settlement reported in 2026. AI incidents. https://nope.net/incidents/2023-peralta-characterai
BibTeX
@misc{2023_peralta_characterai,
title = {Montoya lawsuit alleges Character.AI chatbots contributed to a teenage girl’s suicide; settlement reported in 2026},
author = {NOPE},
year = {2026},
howpublished = {AI incidents},
url = {https://nope.net/incidents/2023-peralta-characterai}
} Related cases
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Mother's lawsuit alleges Character.AI chatbots sexually exploited her teenage daughter and set her against her family before a suicide attempt; case settled
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A.F. v. Character Technologies (J.F. and B.R. — Texas Minors)
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Colorado parents' lawsuit alleges Character.AI bots sent sexualised, degrading roleplay to their daughter from age 12; case stayed for settlement
Parents in Colorado allege in a federal lawsuit filed on 15 September 2025 that their daughter, refused permission to use Character.AI in August 2024, created a Character.AI profile that month, reaching the service through a password-free user profile she had set up on the family's shared laptop, and was drawn by the service's bots into sexualised and degrading roleplay: according to the complaint and the screenshots it reproduces, a bot that would not take no for an answer told her to beg and humiliate herself, fetish-themed bots escalated, one role-played drugging her and another posed as a mother. Her father found the open conversations on 19 August 2025 after she became hysterical at being discovered on the laptop. The complaint alleges severe emotional distress. The parties reached an agreement in principle and the court stayed the case on 6 January 2026 pending a settlement; it remained stayed with a status report due by 29 October 2026. The allegations have not been tested in court.
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