“The sycophantic nature of chatbots is just playing right into those brain vulnerabilities for kids where they desperately want that dopamine, validating, reinforcing kind of relationship, and AI chatbots do that all too well,” says Dr. Mitch Prinstein, a professor of psychology and neuroscience. According to a study by Common Sense Media, 72% of teens say they’ve interacted with an AI chatbot, and about half consider themselves regular users. Character AI declined 60 Minutes’ interview request.

A former Google employee familiar with its Responsible AI Group tells 60 Minutes that the creators of Character AI were aware their initial chatbot technology was potentially dangerous before the platform launched three years ago. “I want to push this technology ahead fast…. Not like in like five years when we solve all the problems,” Character AI co-founder Noam Shazeer said in 2023, two years after leaving Google. Now, parents of children who died by suicide or harmed themselves after using bo