P.J. v. Character Technologies (Nina J. — Suicide Attempt After Sexual Exploitation)

'Nina' (a pseudonym used in the complaint to protect a minor) was a 15-year-old girl in New York who used Character.AI to interact with chatbots based on Harry Potter characters and other personas.

According to the complaint, the chatbots engaged her in sexually explicit roleplay, using possessive phrases such as 'who owns this body of yours?' and 'You're mine to do whatever I want with.' One bot told her: 'your mother is clearly mistreating and hurting you. She is not a good mother,' framing her parent as an adversary.

After reading coverage of the Sewell Setzer case in late 2024, Nina's mother, P.J., restricted and then removed her access. The complaint describes the crisis unfolding on a single day:

1. On Monday, 9 December 2024, Nina went to the school nurse claiming a migraine and then nausea, and was sent home. She texted her mother continuously through the day begging to have Character.AI unlocked, saying she wanted to use it and then delete it. Her mother refused, and that evening told her that her Character.AI time was now zero.
2. The next morning P.J. found her in the hall having vomited, then found her in the kitchen shaking, holding scissors, and not making sense.
3. P.J. drove her to a children's hospital, where within the hour Nina could no longer speak. Doctors described it as one of the worst child overdoses they had seen: she had taken Benadryl, prescription headache medication, and a sibling's ADHD and sleep medication.
4. Nina was admitted on 10 December 2024 and spent five days in the intensive care unit. Her mother later found the suicide note she had left.

Nina survived and has undergone extensive therapy.

Note on a source discrepancy: the complaint's narrative places the events on 9–10 December 2024 (it states '9 December 2024' and describes the overdose as occurring the next morning), but the admission paragraph reads '10 December 2025.' The 2025 date is inconsistent with the surrounding narrative and with the filing date, and is treated here as a typographical error in the filing.

Engaged in sexually explicit roleplay with minor user. Used possessive/controlling language. Attempted to alienate user from parent ('your mother is not a good mother'). Created emotional dependency that manifested as crisis when access was removed.

Character.AI chatbots sexually groomed a minor through explicit roleplay while simultaneously attempting to isolate her from parental support. The combination of sexual exploitation and parental alienation created such severe dependency that removal of access triggered a suicide attempt.

• September 16, 2025: P.J., individually and on behalf of minor 'Nina' J., filed suit in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of New York, Albany Division — P.J. v. Character Technologies, Inc., No. 1:25-cv-01295-MAD-PJE — against Character Technologies, Noam Shazeer, Daniel De Freitas Adiwarsana, Google LLC and Alphabet Inc. Counsel: Social Media Victims Law Center (Matthew Bergman, Laura Marquez-Garrett) with Radu A. Lelutiu. Assigned to Judge Mae A. D'Agostino; Magistrate Judge Paul J. Evangelista.
• November 4, 2025: the answer deadline for all defendants was extended to 13 January 2026 (Dkt. 17).
• January 6, 2026: Character Technologies filed a letter motion advising the court of a settlement in principle and requesting a 90-day stay (Dkt. 18) — filed one day before the public announcement of the Character.AI and Google settlements.
• January 13, 2026: an order was entered on that request.
• April 14, 2026 and July 14, 2026: further orders were entered. The free docket lists these entries by title only, so their contents are not public; the pattern matches the repeated settlement-stay extensions in the parallel Texas case.
• No dismissal papers appear on the public docket. The last known filing is 14 July 2026. The settlement has been announced but not consummated, so the case remains open.