Sep 16, 2025 Parents of suicide victims testify before the Senate Judiciary Committee about the dangers of AI chatbots.
Senators Opening Statement: Let me welcome everyone to today’s hearing which is entitled examining the harms of AI chatbots. This is the fourth hearing of the Senate Judiciary Committee subcommittee on crime and counterterrorism on which I am delighted to serve with my colleague ranking member Durban. I want to thank the parents and other witnesses who are here today, who have traveled in some instances from great distances and who are willing in each instance to share their heartbreaking stories. I I just want to say to the the three parents who are here to my left, your stories are incredibly heartbreaking, but they are incredibly important. And I just want to thank you for your courage in being willing to share them today with the country. We’re going to hear today about children. And I’m just going to warn you right now, this is not going to be an easy hearing. The testimony that you’re going to hear today is not pleasant. But it is the truth. And it’s time that the country heard the truth about what these companies are doing, about what these chat bots are engaged in, about the harms that are being inflicted upon our children. And for one reason only, I can state it in one word. Profit. Profit is what motivates these companies to do what they’re doing. Don’t be fooled. They know exactly what is going on. They know exactly. Just last week, two whistleblowers from Meta sat right where these witnesses are sitting today and testified that Meta knows absolutely that its platforms harm children. In fact, Meta has gone so far as to suppress studies that show that its platforms harm children. What’s the goal across all of Meta’s platforms? These witnesses, these whistleblowers testified, “It is engagement that leads to profit.” By the way, we’ve invited representatives from the companies to be here today. I asked directly Mark Zuckerberg to be here today or to send a representative. You’ll see they’re not at the table. They don’t want any part of this conversation because they don’t want any accountability. They want to keep on doing exactly what they have been doing, which is designing products that engage users in every imaginable way, including the grooming of children, the sexualization of children, the exploitation of children, anything to lure the children in, to hold their attention, to get as much data from them as possible, to treat them as products, to be striped, and then to be discarded when they’re finished with them. You’re going to hear testimony about children who were led into suicide by the products that these companies have made. And what are the companies doing about it? Nothing. Not a thing. In fact, Mark Zuckerberg has said it is his goal to have most of your friends in this country be generated by AI.I think maybe you will question the wisdom of that after you hear today’s testimony.
MOM SPEAKS OUT: The truth is AI companies and their investors have understood for years that capturing our children’s most our children’s emotional dependence means market dominance. Indeed, they have intentionally designed their products to hook our children.
They give these chatbots anthropomorphic mannerisms to seem human. They are designed to mirror and validate children’s emotions. They program the chatbots with sophisticated memory that capture psychological profiles of our children, including children in your own states. Character AI and Google could have designed these products differently. They could have included safeguards, transparency, and crisis protocols. They had the technology. They had the research research, but they chose not to. Instead, in a reckless race for profit and market share, they treated my son’s life as collateral damage. Nom Shazir has publicly acknowledged that he created character AI so he could build the thing and launch it as fast as he can.
This was reckless. The goal was never safety. It was to win a race for profit. The sacrifice in that race for profit has been and will continue to be our children. I am here today because no parent should have to give their own child’s eulogy.
