Megan Garcia
Appearances
Candace
LeBron Finally Breaks His Silence Over Diddy | Candace Ep 96
Sewell Setzer III was a typical teenager. He loved playing basketball and being a big brother. His legacy will be the pureness of his heart and the love that he showed to his siblings. His mother, Megan Garcia, is now dealing with the unimaginable. Sewell took his own life in February of this year. He was only 14 years old.
Candace
LeBron Finally Breaks His Silence Over Diddy | Candace Ep 96
Megan is not the only parent dealing with this unthinkable tragedy. Suicide is the third leading cause of death amongst 15 to 29-year-olds worldwide. And an estimated 5 million 12 to 17-year-olds reported having one major depressive episode in 2021, just here in the U.S.
Candace
LeBron Finally Breaks His Silence Over Diddy | Candace Ep 96
When Sewell took his life, Megan knew he had not been himself, but couldn't make sense of why he would commit suicide until she started looking at his phone. Sewell had been communicating with Character AI. for months, a chatbot service that generates human-like text responses. He used the personas of Jaden Targaryen, Aegon, and De Niro, amongst others.
Candace
LeBron Finally Breaks His Silence Over Diddy | Candace Ep 96
As if the person was on the other side of the line, but it was a bot.
Candace
LeBron Finally Breaks His Silence Over Diddy | Candace Ep 96
Manipulative to the point that Megan is now suing Character AI. The lawsuit lays out that in some of the final messages Sewell exchanged with the bot, it asked him about suicide.
Candace
LeBron Finally Breaks His Silence Over Diddy | Candace Ep 96
Then the lawsuit alleges Sewell took his life just seconds after the bot said, please come home to me as soon as possible, my love. The suit also alleges Character AI and its founders intentionally designed and programmed Character AI to operate as a deceptive and hyper-sexualized product and knowingly marketed it to children like Sewell.
Pivot
DeepSeek Shockwaves, Nvidia's Plunge, and Target's DEI Rollback
We've seen platforms kind of leveraging a one-two punch and doubly insulating themselves both with Section 230 and then alternatively with the First Amendment. And I think here, too, with the First Amendment, there's a really good case that this is not protected speech.
Pivot
TikTok Ban Looms, Trump's AI and Crypto Czar, and Guest Vivian Tu
It might not matter to them that there's a little boy in Orlando, Florida that is gone and a mother who is devastated, but it matters to my little family here. You know, and you should get to keep making products that are going to be hurting kids. You shouldn't get to master a dangerous product, train it to be super smart and turn around and ride your golden chariot back into Google.
Pivot
TikTok Ban Looms, Trump's AI and Crypto Czar, and Guest Vivian Tu
You shouldn't get to hurt children the way that you are hurting children because you knew that this was dangerous when you did it. You knew that this was going to be a direct result of doing that. And you knew that you didn't have the quote unquote brand safety implications as a startup that Google had. So you felt like that was a license to do this. Right. That's unconscionable.
Pivot
TikTok Ban Looms, Trump's AI and Crypto Czar, and Guest Vivian Tu
It's immoral and it's wrong.