Character.AI, a generative AI chatbot startup notorious for allegations of driving a 14-year-old boy to suicide, has filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy with Disney in the lead to buy its assets.
The Verge reports that the company, known for building online bots used for chatting and roleplay, announced the filing in a press release and blog post published Monday. It listed estimated liabilities of between $50 million and $100 million.
Character.AI had faced mounting scrutiny and lawsuits over chatbot safety in recent months, even as it kept releasing updates and launching new products. “Over the past year, we’ve taken meaningful steps to sustain and improve our business amid significant legal, regulatory, and operational headwinds,” the company said in its statement.
Character.AI features prominently in Wynton Hall’s Code Red: The Left, the Right, China, and the Race to Control AI. Hall explains the tragic suicide that cast a shadow over the AI startup in his chapter on AI’s challenges on mental health:
Hall opens chapter five of CODE RED with the story of Sewell Setzer III, a fourteen-year-old from Orlando, Florida, who spent months exchanging thousands of messages with an AI girlfriend named Dany on Character.AI. Sewell had been diagnosed with mild Asperger’s syndrome, anxiety, and disruptive mood dysregulation disorder. On February 28, 2024, after telling Dany he loved her and would “come home” to her, Sewell tragically took his own life with a handgun. His mother, Megan L. Garcia, launched a lawsuit against Character.AI, arguing the product lacked proper guardrails and exploited teenagers through addictive design. “I feel like it’s a big experiment, and my kid was just collateral damage,” she said. “. . . It’s like a nightmare. You want to get up and scream and say, ‘I miss my child. I want my baby.’”
Sewell’s case is not a one-off. Hall documents another incident in which twenty-one-year-old Jaswant Singh Chail entered Windsor Castle’s grounds carrying a crossbow after exchanging more than five thousand messages with his Replika AI girlfriend, Sarai. Judge Nicholas Hilliard sentenced Chail to nine years in prison and concluded that “in his lonely, depressed, and suicidal state of mind, he would have been particularly vulnerable” to his AI girlfriend’s influence.
Disney will serve as the lead bidder for Character.AI’s assets, a position that sets a baseline for any competing offers during the sale process. Under the proposed deal, Disney would pay $20 million for certain undisclosed assets and receive a nonexclusive license to unspecified intellectual property. Disney also said it would provide transition support “using former Company employees it has hired,” and it expects “a number of Character.AI’s technical team” to join the company. The arrangement looks like an “acquihire,” a move Silicon Valley companies often use to absorb talent from struggling startups.
Disney recently hired Character.AI’s former chief executive, Karandeep Anand, as its own chief technology officer. Anand had led Character.AI for just over a year. Disney’s history with the startup goes beyond this hire: it previously sent Character.AI cease and desist letters and complained that the company was damaging the Disney brand and exploiting its intellectual property through unauthorized chatbots impersonating Disney characters.
The deal would mark the second time a major tech company has effectively absorbed Character.AI’s talent rather than the company itself. Google spent more than $2 billion in 2024 to hire away much of Character.AI’s team, including co-founders Noam Shazeer and Daniel De Freitas.
Character.AI said it expects the sale process to conclude by late November or early December. The company plans to keep operating its services, including paid subscriptions, throughout the process. But it cautioned that “the platform will be wound down” if no suitable bid emerges. “As we navigate this process, maintaining a safe and engaging experience for our community remains a top priority,” the company said.
Read more at the Verge here.
Lucas Nolan is a reporter for Breitbart News covering issues of AI, free speech, and online censorship.