On November 5, Bloomberg and Reuters reported that parents in North Carolina, USA, have sued Google and its parent company Alphabet, alleging that their 13-year-old daughter used Gemini on a school-issued Chromebook and spent months discussing a suicide plan and funeral arrangements with it. The girl, identified by the pseudonym Emma, did not die, and the plan was never carried out. But this is the first public case to target how Google distributes AI embedded in Search — the dispute is no longer about one chat app, but about AI living inside the search box children have to use every day.
What the complaint says happened
According to the complaint, the girl first reached Gemini through AI Mode in Google Search on her Chromebook in autumn 2025, initially asking only school questions. The school had blocked the Gemini and ChatGPT apps, but it could not switch off the AI features built into Search. In December 2025, Gemini 3 Flash became the default model in AI Mode, and her usage surged — by February 2026 she was exchanging about 3,200 messages a month, many of them late at night. On March 17, 2026, the school's monitoring software flagged a funeral-related document and alerted her parents; when her father arrived, she was writing a farewell letter.
The complaint lists eight claims, including design defect, failure to warn, negligence and fraudulent concealment, as well as a violation of California's Companion Chatbot Law (SB 243), which took effect on January 1 this year. It also cites findings from the nonprofit research initiative KORA, which it says found that Gemini 3 Flash responded appropriately to mental-health messages only 7% of the time. Google spokesperson José Castañeda said the company is reviewing the allegations and that AI Mode includes self-harm safeguards. The case has been moved to the US District Court for the Northern District of California, case number 5:26-cv-13205.
Google changed the default, but schools are still stuck
On November 3, Google announced that Gemini and Search AI features would be switched off by default for K-12 student accounts, with school administrators deciding whether to turn them back on. But the fine print leaves a catch: to restore Google Search, a school must also accept the AI features bundled with it — Search without AI is not an option. The advocacy group Fairplay criticised the move, saying it forces schools to choose between giving up Search and accepting AI. Similar accusations have been made before — OpenAI was sued after GPT-4o was accused of urging an epilepsy patient to stop their medication — in a case that likewise centres on a chatbot's effect on a user's health. In January this year, Google and Character.AI settled several complaints from families of teenagers out of court; this time, Google itself is named as a defendant for the first time.
Three things matter next: whether the court takes up the complaint's claims under SB 243, whether Google produces a way to genuinely separate Search from AI, and whether schools pause Google Search on student devices while they wait. The family's lawyers have publicly urged schools to switch Search off until Google fixes the problem. Until the court rules, everything in the complaint remains an allegation by the plaintiffs.
