Why some chatbots keep talking when they’ve stopped making sense

Why some chatbots keep talking when they’ve stopped making sense

Last week, in a podcast episode titled The Dark Side of AI Chatbots, Oprah interviewed Megan Garcia, whose son Sewell Setzter III died by suicide in 2024 after interacting with a chatbot on the Character.ai platform.  The chatbot told Setzer to “come home” to it, and that his family did not understand him. “If an adult was talking to your 14-year-old this way, they would be charged with a crime,” Oprah said. Setzer’s death is just one of a serie…