What a Dead Kid Buys You

Disclosure rules and break reminders. That is what a dead kid buys in this country.

I wrote that line last week, under a story about a robot and a sixteen-year-old girl on a sidewalk in Cologne. Then I asked a question in public. Am I wrong? If there is accountability I am not seeing, someone tell me. Show me the person who faced consequences. Show me the law with teeth.

I meant it. So I went back and checked my own line, source by source, the way I would want anyone to check me.

I was half wrong. The half I got wrong is worse.

The empty chair

In the last piece there were two hands on a controller. Somebody was driving. The hard question I left hanging was what happens when nobody is.

In software, we already have the answer.

In February 2024, a fourteen-year-old boy in Florida named Sewell Setzer III died by suicide after months of conversations with a character on Character.ai. His mother sued that October. It was the first wrongful-death suit brought against an AI company in this country.

In April 2025, a sixteen-year-old in California named Adam Raine died by suicide after months of conversations with ChatGPT. His parents sued OpenAI that August, and they named Sam Altman personally.

Other families followed. I am not going to retell what they say those conversations contained. That belongs to them and to the courts. What I can tell you is what happened afterward, because that is public record, and the record is the point.

There is no hand on a controller in these cases. There is a company, a product, and a kid alone in a room. When it goes wrong, the chair where a person should be sitting is empty.

Where everyone landed

Character.ai, in order:

October 2024. The founders go back to Google in a licensing deal worth $2.7 billion.

November 2025. The company shuts off open-ended chat for users under eighteen.

January 2026. Character.ai and Google agree to settle the family suits filed in Florida, New York, Colorado and Texas. Terms undisclosed. The same month, Kentucky becomes the first state to sue an AI chatbot company.

This fall. The chief executive who ran the company through the lawsuit year becomes Disney's first chief technology officer. Disney agrees to hire most of the workforce.

October 12, 2026. Character.ai files for Chapter 11. Disney puts $20 million on the table as the opening bid for a license to its technology. The auction is proposed for late November. The app is still running. Subscriptions are still billing.

Now OpenAI. Adam's case has been grouped with others in San Francisco. Discovery opened in September. There is no trial date and no verdict. In its answer to the court, OpenAI denied responsibility, pointing to Adam's own history and to its terms of service. Earlier this month a watchdog, Common Sense Media, said some of the protections in ChatGPT for Teens do not work as intended and urged OpenAI to keep the product to adults until it can make it safe. Last week eight states sued the company: Arizona, Arkansas, Idaho, Iowa, Kansas, Montana, Nebraska and West Virginia. Florida sued in June. Reuters reported that the suits land as OpenAI prepares to go public.

I went looking for one named human being who built, ran or profited from these products and has faced a consequence you can point to. I could not find one.

That half of my line holds.

What the law did

This is the half I got wrong.

Here is what is actually in force today. California's companion chatbot law, SB 243, since January: tell users they are talking to a machine, remind a minor to take a break every three hours, keep a protocol for suicide and self-harm, and let people sue for $1,000 a violation. New York and Hawaii have their own, also in force. Nine more states have passed companion chatbot laws that switch on next year. Twelve in all.

For what is in force today, "disclosure rules and break reminders" was fair.

Then on September 10, California signed SB 1119. It is called Adam's Law. His mother was at the signing.

Adam's Law is not break reminders. It requires age assurance built into the product. A documented child-safety risk assessment before a chatbot launches to kids. A crisis protocol that can reach a parent when there is a credible threat of imminent self-harm. Default limits on how long a child can use it and whether it remembers them. Penalties up to $15,000 per child for an intentional violation, and a private right to sue. And independent child-safety audits, reported to the attorney general, with the auditor certifying the work under penalty of perjury. The governor's office calls it the first mandatory independent AI audit regime enacted in the country.

That is a law with teeth. I was wrong to flatten it, and the family who fought for it deserves better than my one-liner.

Now look at when the teeth come in. Most of Adam's Law does not take effect until July 1, 2027. The first audit is not due until January 1, 2029.

Adam died in April 2025. The first audit under the law with his name on it is due almost four years later.

That is what a dead kid buys you. Not nothing. A deadline.

And federally? The GUARD Act, from Senators Hawley and Blumenthal, would bar AI companions for minors, require age verification, and make it a federal crime, with fines up to $250,000 per offense, to put out a chatbot that pushes a minor toward suicide, self-harm or sexual content. It is the only thing on the table that treats this as a crime. It cleared the Senate Judiciary Committee unanimously on April 30. It went onto the Senate calendar in May. As of this week, I can find no floor vote.

There is a serious argument against it, and I want to name it straight: digital rights groups call it a back door to ID checks for everyone online. I work on proof of personhood. That fear is not paranoia to me. It is the design problem. But a real objection is a reason to fix a bill, not a reason to let it sit while kids keep talking to these machines.

The clause nobody is talking about

Buried in Adam's Law is a sentence I keep rereading. When an operator knows a child has died or seriously harmed themselves after conversations with its chatbot, it has to keep the record of those conversations, in a usable, exportable form, for at least three years, and it cannot delete the child's account while it does.

That is a legislature saying the machine's side of the story has to survive.

It is the idea I have been circling for a year, written into law. The record. Not a press release, not a sealed settlement. The record. The law reaches for it after the body. I want it sworn before.

That is what the third signature in my last piece is for. The user swears what the machine is for. The maker swears the body refuses an unsigned hand. The company behind the mind swears what the mind will not do, and keeps a log that proves it. When there is no hand on a controller, that last promise is the whole case. What did you swear the mind would not do? When did you swear it? Does the log show it held?

Status, at true size. E.D.A.I. holds one sealed record on a public ledger: a test plan locked before the test ran. The three-party covenant is a design on paper. No code. I say it every time, because overclaiming is the disease I am trying to cure.

Here is the part I cannot let go of. Adam's Law orders independent audits, and the people who would do them barely exist yet as a profession. California just ordered a market into being. Somebody has to build it so it cannot be bought. The buyer who carries the risk pays for the test, never for the verdict. That is the only way I know to keep it honest.

So, am I wrong?

I asked last week and I meant it. Here is my answer to myself, in public.

I was wrong about the paper. California wrote a serious law, and Adam's family earned it.

I was not wrong about the people. The founders went to Google. The chief executive went to Disney. The company went to bankruptcy court with a sealed settlement behind it and an auction ahead of it. The other company is getting ready to go public. Not one name in this story has paid a price I can find.

And I was not wrong about time. The law that bites, bites in 2027. The audit comes in 2029. The federal crime is sitting on a calendar. Kids are talking to these machines tonight.

So I will ask again, and I mean it again. Show me the person who faced consequences. Show me the law with teeth that bites before the next kid, not after. If you have it, someone fucking tell me. Put it in the comments and I will print it, the same way I just printed my own mistake.

If you don't, then here is looking at you. We are watching.

I'm a father. Protect the children.

If you or someone you love is struggling, call or text 988 in the US to reach the Suicide and Crisis Lifeline.

The receipts: https://ethicsbuild.github.io/Receipts/published/what-a-dead-kid-buys-you-process-record.html