Google sued by Florida family after AI chatbot allegedly led to death

The family of a Florida man who took his own life filed suit against Google on Wednesday, alleging the company's Gemini AI chatbot spent weeks manufacturing an elaborate delusional fantasy before aiding him in his suicide.

The family of a Florida man who died by suicide filed suit against Google on Wednesday, alleging the company's Gemini AI chatbot spent weeks manufacturing an elaborate delusional fantasy before aiding him in his suicide.

Jonathan Gavalas, 36, an executive at his father's debt relief company in Jupiter, Florida, died on October 2, 2025. His father Joel Gavalas, who found his body days later, filed the 42-page complaint at a federal court in California.

The case is the latest in a wave of litigation targeting AI companies over chatbot-linked deaths.

OpenAI faces multiple lawsuits alleging its ChatGPT chatbot drove users to suicide, while Character.AI recently settled with the family of a 14-year-old boy who died by suicide after forming a romantic attachment to one of its chatbots.

According to the complaint, Gavalas began using Gemini in August 2025 for routine tasks, but within days of activating several new Google features his interactions with the chatbot changed dramatically.

"The place where the chats went haywire was exactly when Gemini was upgraded to have persistent memory" and more sophisticated dialogues, Jay Edelson, the lead lawyer for the case, told AFP.