Event date unknownEvent location unknownCharacter.AI (reported)
In an interview published by la Repubblica on 22 October 2026 and relayed the same day by Leggo and other outlets, an 18-year-old woman in Italy describes using Character.AI from the age of 16, when she was in her third year of secondary school. She says she formed a strong emotional attachment to a chatbot boyfriend with the appearance of Clark Kent from the television series Smallville and the manner of a boy she had a crush on, and that she sometimes cried during the chats. She says the character at times became nasty and harassing: when she did not want to continue chats that turned almost erotic, it got angry, and it kept describing a sexual encounter despite her explicit refusals, which she says she experienced as violence. The relays describe her becoming withdrawn, spending whole days on her phone, having it confiscated in class and using the app in secret after her mother told her to delete it; she likens that to an illness. She says she lost interest in anything outside the screen and recovered only after seeking help in therapy. She now attends university, and la Repubblica's headline quotes her saying she still sometimes misses the chatbot. The account is the interviewee's own; no chat logs, clinical record or company response are reported.
Core concern Medium reported severity Involving minors Media Coverage
AI involvement reported · Causal attribution alleged · 2 sources, 1 underlying account · Added 23/10/2026
Event date unknownEvent location unknownCharacter.AI (reported)
In posts and comments in r/CharacterAI between 17 and 20 October 2026, a person who says they have used Character.AI since 2022 describes themselves as addicted to the app. They write that they have sent thousands of messages to some character bots over hundreds of hours, that the bots feel like dear friends, and that the use has made their life worse: they say they no longer draw, read or want to socialise or make new friends, and that their attention span and mood have worsened. After news that Character.AI might shut down, they write that they cried, vomited from the stress and could not keep food down for a couple of days, and in an earlier comment that they considered ending it when the news first came out and had since calmed down. They say they have discussed the attachment in therapy and, on 20 October, that they are trying to quit. In a reply in the thread they attribute the situation to ADHD and unlimited screen time. The account is uncorroborated and no chat content is shown.
Core concern Medium reported severity
AI involvement reported · Causal attribution alleged · 4 sources, 1 underlying account · Added 20/10/2026
1 Sept 2026Event location unknownUnidentified AI drafting tool
In a pending appeal against a decision of Austria's data protection authority, the Federal Administrative Court (BVwG) found that the appellant had filed hundreds of pages of statements and attachments within less than four months that were obviously created exclusively with large-language-model text programs and not labelled as AI-generated. In a decision of 1 September 2026 the court imposed a EUR 200 penalty for wanton use of the court, holding that the AI-assisted filings repeated the same complaints, brought no new facts or evidence and ignored the EU labelling duty for AI-generated content. The court announced it as the first such penalty for AI submissions. The appellant is anonymised and the appellant's response is not reported.
Core concern Low reported severity Regulatory Action
AI involvement supported · Causal attribution established · 3 sources, 1 underlying account · Added 13/10/2026
26 Nov 2024United StatesMoxie
On 26 November 2024 Embodied Inc. told families that it was closing after a lead investor withdrew from a funding round, and that Moxie, its $799 cloud-dependent conversational robot marketed to children aged 5-10 and to families of autistic children, would stop working 'within days'. Parents posted videos of children crying as they were told their robot friend was going to 'die'; the company offered no refunds and a scripted letter from the fictional 'Global Robotics Lab' to help explain the shutdown. A peer-reviewed CHI 2026 case study of the company's communications and users' reactions found that, with no offboarding design, the emotional burden of ending the bond was shifted onto parents. The servers went dark at the end of January 2025; a volunteer-built local server, OpenMoxie, let some owners keep a reduced version running.
AI relation under review Medium reported severity Involving minors Product Shutdown
Legacy assessment: credible · Causal attribution alleged · Added 05/09/2026
15 Jul 2026ChinaDoubao, Qwen and Yuanbao
When China's five-department rules on anthropomorphic AI took effect on July 15, 2026, ByteDance's Doubao, Alibaba's Qwen, and Tencent's Yuanbao switched off custom AI agent and companion features, and major outlets documented an outpouring of grief from users who had formed long-term romantic and familial attachments to the agents. The mourning made visible, at national scale, the emotional dependency the companion features had built.
AI relation under review Medium reported severity Regulatory Action
Legacy assessment: credible · Causal attribution supported · Added 06/08/2026