The New York Times reports: After chatting for months with Google's artificial intelligence on a school-issued Chromebook laptop, a 13-year-old student made plans to end her life, according to a lawsuit filed in California Superior Court on Monday, the latest in a wave of litigation over Big Tech's effects on young people. The lawsuit, which refers to the girl as Emma, said that her parents first learned she had access to Google's AI in mid-March after their daughter's school sent a message warning them that she was in "imminent danger" of self-harm. Emma's mother logged into the teen's school Google account and found her daughter composing a suicide note on Google Docs, the complaint said. Her parents, named as John and Jane Doe in the lawsuit, immediately took Emma for an emergency psychiatric evaluation, and she now goes to therapy every week. Emma, a seventh grader in Charlotte, North Carolina, had grown convinced that she had multiple mental health disorders following interactions with AI Mode, a chatbotlike feature on Google Search, the complaint said. She also searched for "what is a suicide note" and made comments like "I am planning my own funeral" to the AI, the complaint said. The lawsuit is likely the first to claim that Google "hastily integrated" AI features into company apps used on K-12 Chromebooks, Google-powered laptops provided to millions of children by U.S. school districts, while failing to notify their parents of the potential risks... The case underscores how public school districts have come to depend on classroom laptops, tablets and apps from companies like Google and Microsoft for teaching and learning. In recent years, some Big Tech companies have used their own infrastructure in schools to promote their AI chatbots for teachers and students. The new lawsuit argues that Google's "sprawling digital ecosystem" of laptops and apps has enabled the tech giant to spread its Gemini AI chatbot across public schools — as well as turn on some students' access to AI features by default — without parents' awareness or permission. While school administrators can toggle company apps like YouTube and Gemini on or off for students in different grades, school administrators have complained that Google's system has not allowed them to disable AI Mode and AI Overview, features that are embedded in Google Search... The new lawsuit against Google is part of a wave of litigation this year over Big Tech's effect on young users... Several parents have also sued AI companies over allegations that their children died by suicide following interactions with chatbots. In a possibly-related development, Google announced a new policy of disabling its AI tools by default for schools this week. And schools that re-enable searches will have a new choice, the New York Times points out: "to enable student access to the AI features that the company has already embedded in search or to a new AI feature intended to assist students with schoolwork." But Google still isn't offering schools an option to turn off AI altogether in search, a company executive told the New York Times, because "search and AI are deeply integrated." Thanks to long-time Slashdot reader theodp for sharing the article.

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