Suicide-by-chatbot puts Big Tech in the product liability hot seat

Brian Downing, University of Mississippi

It is a sad fact of online life that users search for information about suicide. In the earliest days of the internet, bulletin boards featured suicide discussion groups. To this day, Google hosts archives of these groups, as do other services.

Google and others can host and display this content under the protective cloak of U.S. immunity from liability for the dangerous advice third parties might give about suicide. That’s because the speech is the third party’s, not Google’s.

But what if ChatGPT, informed by the very same online suicide materials, gives you suicide advice in a chatbot conversation? I’m a technology law scholar and a former lawyer and engineering director at Google, and I see AI chatbots shifting Big Tech’s position in the legal landscape. Families of suicide victims are testing out chatbot liability arguments in court right now, with some early successes.

Who is responsible when a chatbot speaks?