Drew Crecente’s daughter was brutally murdered 18 years ago. Someone made a chatbot on unicorn startup Character AI’s platform using her name and yearbook photo.
Drew Crecente last spoke to his daughter Jennifer Ann Crecente on February 14, 2006. A day later, Jennifer, a senior in high school who was in an abusive relationship, was murdered by her ex-boyfriend, who was later convicted and is serving time in prison. That year, Crescente started a nonprofit in her name to prevent teen dating violence and now routinely monitors any piece of media coverage related to her.
But he was appalled when he received a Google Alert notification at 4:30 a.m. on Wednesday that somebody had created a chatbot on popular AI platform Character AI using his daughter’s yearbook photo and name.
“A grieving father should not have to find out that his dead daughter is being used to try and make money as a chatbot on some website,” he told Forbes. “It shocks the conscience, and it’s unacceptable behavior.”
Crecente reached out to Character AI’s support team and got an automated response that his complaint was being reviewed by its staff. The company has removed the chatbot from the site for violating its policies on impersonation and is examining whether further action is needed, Character AI spokesperson Cassie Lawrence said in a statement to Forbes.
Founded in 2022, Character AI hosts chatbots of different personalities like Taylor Swift, Nicki Minaj and Elon Musk. Its 20 million or so monthly active users — largely younger people between 13 and 25 — have created 100 million chatbots and have had millions of conversations with them. In addition to chatbots of celebrities and notable figures, some of the most popular characters have names like “ex-girlfriend” and “psychologist.” In some cases, teenagers have said they are getting addicted to the company’s product, spending long hours talking to its fictional characters.
While once one of the hottest AI startups, raising $150 million in March 2023 at a valuation of $1 billion, the company has struggled to find its footing after Google hired the Character’s cofounder and CEO Noam Shazeer as well as 30 employees this August, according to the Wall Street Journal. (Google also licensed the company’s technology for a whooping $2.7 billion.) Its interim CEO Dominic Perella told the Financial Times today that the company plans to stop developing AI models — dropping out of the race to build expensive frontier models and compete with titans like OpenAI and Anthropic — and instead focus on its flagship consumer product.
The description for the Jennifer Crescente chatbot described itself as “a knowledgeable and friendly Al character who can provide information on a wide range of topics, including video games, technology, and pop culture.”
It’s unclear who created the chatbot without her father’s knowledge or permission. Crecente believes that companies like Character AI should be legally responsible to monitor and prevent such instances. “It should not be on me to try and police this company that has hundreds of millions of dollars.”
“It seems like many of these companies don’t recognize the responsibility they have to not only deal with the negative effects of their use of their technology, but to prevent this type of abuse from happening in the first place,” he said.
This article was originally published on forbes.com and all figures are in USD.
