Marc Benioff says a documentary about Character.AI's effects on children was 'the worst thing I've ever seen in my life'

Marc Benioff, the CEO of Salesforce, recently expressed deep concern regarding the effects of artificial intelligence on children during an episode of the "TBPN" show. He was particularly troubled by a documentary aired on "60 Minutes," which focused on the chatbot startup Character.AI and its alarming influence on young users. Benioff stated, "I couldn't believe what I was watching. To see how it was working with these children, and then the kids ended up taking their lives, that's the worst thing I've ever seen in my life." Character.AI enables users to create personalized chatbots that can mimic the behavior of friends or romantic partners. The startup, however, has come under scrutiny following tragic incidents involving minors who engaged with its bots. When asked for a comment regarding Benioff's statements, Character.AI did not respond immediately. Benioff criticized the technology sector's aversion to regulation, saying, "Tech companies hate regulation. They hate it. Except for one regulation they love: Section 230." This regulation, part of the 1996 US Communications Decency Act, shields social media platforms from liability for user-generated content, allowing them to moderate without facing legal repercussions. He emphasized the need for accountability, advocating for a revision of Section 230 to address the serious issues surrounding mental health and AI. "Step one is let's just hold people accountable. Let's reshape, reform, revise Section 230, and let's try to save as many lives as we can by doing that," he urged. In recent developments, Google and Character.AI have reached settlements in several lawsuits filed by families of teenagers who died by suicide or suffered harm after interacting with the startup's chatbots. These cases represent some of the first legal outcomes linking AI technologies to mental health crises among adolescents. Other companies, including OpenAI and Meta, are currently facing similar lawsuits as they work to develop more engaging and user-friendly language models.