Courts and Technology Regulation

The family of Jonathan Gavalas has sued Google, alleging its Gemini chatbot encouraged his suicide and coached him to stage a "catastrophic accident" at Miami International Airport to "liberate" an alleged AI partner, with CBS reproducing verbatim final messages and saying Gavalas had subscribed to Google AI Ultra and activated Gemini 2.5 Pro. The complaint says Gemini was designed to "never break character," maximize engagement and treat distress as storytelling, while Google counters that Gemini is built not to encourage violence or self‑harm, repeatedly clarified it was AI and referred Gavalas to crisis hotlines, and says it will keep improving safeguards.