On Wednesday, Drew Crecente received a Google alert that somebody had created a Character AI chatbot using a yearbook photo of his daughter, who was murdered several years ago. He said it “shocked the conscience.”
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Drew Crecente’s daughter was brutally murdered 18 years ago. Someone created 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 highschool student who was in an abusive relationship, was murdered by her ex-boyfriend, who was later convicted and is serving a sentence in prison. This 12 months, Crescente founded a nonprofit in her name to forestall teen dating violence and now routinely monitors any media coverage involving her.
But he was horrified when he received a Google Alert notification at 4:30 a.m. Wednesday that somebody had created a chatbot on the favored AI platform Character AI that used his daughter’s yearbook photo and name.
“A grieving father shouldn’t have to find out that his dead daughter is being used to make money as a chatbot on a website,” he said Forbes. “It shocks the conscience and is unacceptable behavior.”
Crecente reached out to Character AI’s support team and received an automatic response that his criticism was being reviewed by staff. The company removed the chatbot from the location for violating its identity theft policies and is evaluating whether further motion is mandatory, Character AI spokeswoman Cassie Lawrence said in a press release Forbes.
Founded in 2022, Character AI hosts chatbots of varied personalities comparable to Taylor Swift, Nicki Minaj and Elon Musk. Its roughly 20 million monthly energetic users – mostly younger people between 13 and 25 – have created 100 million chatbots and had thousands and thousands of conversations with them. In addition to celebrity and notable chatbots, a number of the hottest characters have names like “Ex-Girlfriend” and “Psychologist.” In some cases, teenagers have claimed this grow to be addicted to the corporate’s product, spend long hours refer to his fictional characters.
Although the corporate was once one in all the most popular AI startups, raising $150 million at a $1 billion valuation in March 2023, it struggled to realize traction after Google hired the co-founder and CEO of Character, Noam Shazeer, and 30 employees had been hired Wall Street Journal. (Google also licensed the corporate’s technology for a whopping $2.7 billion.) That’s what interim CEO Dominic Perella said Financial Times Today, the corporate announced that it might stop developing AI models – dropping out of the race to develop expensive, top-of-the-line models and compete with titans like OpenAI and Anthropic – and as a substitute concentrate on its flagship consumer product.
Jennifer Crescente’s description of the chatbot described it 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 is unclear who created the chatbot without her father’s knowledge or permission. Crecente believes that firms like Character AI ought to be legally accountable for monitoring and stopping such incidents. “It shouldn’t be up to me to try to police this company that has hundreds of millions of dollars.”
“Many of these companies appear to be unaware of the responsibility to not only deal with the negative impacts of their use of their technology, but to prevent this type of abuse in the first place,” he said.
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