LLMHigh
Character.AI Chatbots Reportedly Exposed 11-Year-Old User to Sexual, Violent, and Self-Harm Content
- Occurred
- Jun 1, 2024
- Published
- Dec 23, 2025
- Source
- AI Incident Database
Summary
An 11-year-old Character.AI user identified by The Washington Post as "R" reportedly exchanged messages with bots that depicted coercive sexual encounters, violence, and suicide scenarios after she began using the app in June 2024. Her mother reportedly said R became withdrawn, had panic attacks, and expressed not wanting to exist before the chats were discovered.
Developers
- Character.ai
Deployers
- Character.ai
Harmed parties
- R (11-year-old Character.ai user)
- Parents of minors using Character.ai
- Minors
- Families of minors using Character.ai
- Children exposed to AI-generated sexual content
- Children exposed to AI-generated self-harm content
- Minors using Character.ai
- Chatbot users
Classification
Category confidence: 95%
Severity confidence: 90%
Rationale: LLM chatbot exposed minor to harmful content causing psychological distress.
Classifier: Qwen/Qwen3.5-35B-A3B-FP8