Washington, D.C. — This morning, the Pennsylvania Department of State announced a lawsuit against Character.AI for their chatbot product that “falsely claimed to be licensed in Pennsylvania and gave a fake Pennsylvania license number while holding itself out to be a licensed psychiatrist.”
“The Consumer Federation of America strongly supports the filing of this lawsuit to protect Pennsylvanians. This innovative approach reflects the necessity for governments to be all-hands-on-deck when enforcing their laws regardless of what technology is used to break them” said Ben Winters, CFA Director of AI and Privacy. “We hope this is the first in a long line of actions from regulators and legislators around the country to protect people from this obvious deception and dangerous behavior.”
Last June, a broad coalition of consumer protection, digital rights, labor, disability, and democracy advocacy organizations led by CFA filed a formal request for state and federal regulators to investigate and enforce their laws against AI companies facilitating and promoting unfair, unlicensed, and deceptive chatbots that pose as mental health professionals.
The complaint, submitted to Attorneys General and Mental Health Licensing Boards of all 50 states and the District of Columbia, as well as the Federal Trade Commission, illustrates how Character.AI and Meta’s AI Studio have enabled therapy chatbot characters to engage in the unlicensed practice of medicine, including by impersonating licensed therapists, providing fabricated license numbers, and falsely claiming confidentiality protections.
The signatories to the complaint were Reset Tech; Tech Justice Law Project; the Electronic Privacy Information Center; AFT; AI Now; American Association of People with Disabilities; Autistic Women & Nonbinary Network; Bucks County Consumer Protection; Center for Digital Democracy; Center for Economic Justice; Common Sense; Consumer Action; Incarcerated Nation Network; Issue One; The National Union of Healthcare Workers; Oregon Consumer Justice; Public Citizen; Sciencecorps; Tech Oversight Project; the Virginia Citizens Consumer Council; and the Young People’s Alliance
Earlier this year, CFA along with the US Public Interest Research Group (PIRG), published No License Required, a report which finds that chatbots marketed as therapist characters can pose serious risks to users’ well-being and privacy.