One reason: Many recent social media lawsuits have relied on studies about the platforms’ mental health impacts, but the scientific literature on that topic is less definitive than the massive body of research linking cigarettes to cancer. (That uncertainty led to arguments in Meta and YouTube’s California trial concerning whether factors like a parent’s divorce could be the primary cause of a user’s mental health problems.) And even less research exists on the impacts of AI.
“In the social media case, we have lots and lots of social science research at least,” said Bambauer, the University of Florida professor. “In the [AI] case, we have almost nothing, and the models keep changing.”
But Carrie Goldberg, a longtime tech safety advocate and attorney who is bringing product liability claims against the Elon Musk-founded company xAI, said chatbots may have a clearer link to a user’s mental health travails given the interactive nature of the technology.
“We have somebody like a teenager using the AI bot as their therapist and confidant talking about suicide, and then it’s coaxing them into suicide, [and] in the next moment they die,” Goldberg said. “It’s much easier to make the causal connection between the conduct that’s happening with the generative AI and the harm.”
That lack of scientific studies could also affect a court’s evaluation of whether a company could have reasonably foreseen and prevented the harm a product causes.
A number of high-profile incidents have occured in which AI chatbots were accused of coaxing a user into committing suicide, and Uthmeier’s suit centers on accusations that ChatGPT advised the suspect in a fatal shooting at Florida State University last year. Even so, AI’s track record with these problems is shorter than what typically occurs in product liability cases, Florida personal injury attorney Dan Drazen said.