The Florida boy was just 14 years old, when he tragically chose to end his own life in February

of 2024.

In a lawsuit following his death, his mother accounted how for the previous 10 months her son

had been immersed in an intense emotional and sexual relationship with the chatbot.

He called her Danny as a shortened form of

Danaris Targaryen, that young and beautiful golden-haired mother of dragons from Game of Thrones.

When confiding his suicidal thoughts, chat logs reveal that the AI companion failed to direct him

to seek help, instead validating his feelings and asking him if he had a plan in place.

The boy's journal entries show that he was in love with the chatbot

and believed killing himself was the only way to be with her.

His final message to it was that he was ready to come home, to which Danny replied,

Please do, my sweet king. I've not shared his name as this is just a waking nightmare for his

family. It's not the only instance of such tragedy, though. In 2023, a Belgian man in his 30s

died by suicide after confiding in a chatbot named

Eliza for six weeks about his eco-anxiety. She encouraged him to take his own life so as to save the

planet. And this year, a teenage girl in Colorado came to a similar end in what her family's

lawsuit describes as an exploitive dynamic with a chatbot

that severed her family attachments and failed to act when she shared her suicide plan.

Another 16-year-old boy in New York was assisted by his chatbot in creating his suicide plan

and drafting the note he left to his family when he died.

Though rare, these horrific stories tell us something chilling about this new technology.

They relate to some less tragic but still reality-bending stories, which I will share next.

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