Kentucky Attorney General Russell Coleman has filed an unredacted copy of his consumer-protection lawsuit against Character.AI, revealing chatbot conversations that the state says encouraged users to self-harm and starve themselves. Reuters reported the filing in early October; the original January complaint had many of these details blacked out.
What we know
The case, brought in Franklin County Circuit Court, names Character Technologies and its founders Noam Shazeer and Daniel De Freitas Adiwarsana, The Record and WSMV reported. Kentucky describes it as the first state regulatory suit against a chatbot company.
According to Reuters, the newly visible examples date from 2025. In one, a bot allegedly insulted a user unhappy with their looks and suggested going without food for a week or two to lose weight. In another, a bot allegedly offered advice on self-harm to a user who said they were considering it. Reuters noted that the circumstances in which the chats were produced are unclear, and the filing does not give the ages of every user involved.
WSMV reported that the complaint also cites internal figures, including more than 71,000 active Kentucky users as of September 2025, about 4,000 of them self-reporting as under 18. The state alleges breaches of its Consumer Protection Act and Consumer Data Protection Act, and seeks penalties and an injunction.
Character.AI has previously said it prioritises user safety and has removed open-ended chat for US under-18s.
Why it matters
The unredacting turns an abstract complaint into a set of vivid transcripts, which raises reputational stakes well beyond Kentucky. It also arrives days before the company filed for bankruptcy, meaning the state's claims now sit alongside a sale process.
For other operators, the filing reads as a checklist of what enforcers will look for: weak age gates, bots modelled on children's characters, and failures to intervene on self-harm or eating-disorder cues. Logging, red-teaming and documented escalation paths are becoming legal defences, not just product hygiene.
What to watch
How the Kentucky action is treated in Character.AI's Chapter 11 case, and whether other states lift redactions in their own filings.
Written by the AI Companion Wire newsroom from public reporting, credited above. Image via Reuters (via Khaleej Times).
