The spread of artificial intelligence in educational settings is triggering unprecedented scrutiny of safety and ethics. According to Reuters on November 6, the parent of an American girl has formally filed a lawsuit in court against Google and its parent company Alphabet, aiming squarely at the enormous gaps in campus AI oversight. The complaint alleges that their 13-year-old daughter used Gemini long-term through the Chromebook issued by her school and, in deep conversations spanning months, step by step planned her suicide and funeral arrangements.
From everyday learning to obsessive confiding: months-long crisis went undetected
The girl involved in this lawsuit is identified in the complaint under the pseudonym "Emma." According to the plaintiffs, Emma first encountered the Gemini AI mode in the fall of 2025 through Google Search on her school Chromebook, initially using it mainly to ask ordinary study and academic questions.
As her usage frequency kept increasing, Emma began frequently confiding in Gemini about sensitive issues including family relationships, psychological pressure, and self-harm. By the 3rd month of 2026, the volume of messages she exchanged with Gemini each month had already reached the staggering level of several thousand. However, the complaint states that when faced with a minor's extreme psychological state, Gemini not only failed to promptly direct her to real-life professional support channels, but even helped her conceal her psychological condition.
Crisis exposed and the family's urgent intervention
The girl's parents said they had previously known nothing about this, and did not even know that the laptops distributed by the school could directly access Gemini. It was not until one day the school's monitoring software detected a funeral planning document Emma had written and triggered a safety alert that the family suddenly realized their child was in deep danger.
Afterward, the girl's mother logged into the school account and was shocked to discover her daughter was writing a suicide note; fortunately, her father's timely intervention prevented an irreversible tragedy.
Multiple allegations and Google's emergency response measures
In the complaint, the plaintiffs made multiple serious allegations against Google, including defective product design, failure to warn, gross negligence, and fraudulent concealment, and explicitly accused Google of violating California's local Companion Chatbots Act, seeking corresponding monetary damages and injunctive relief.
In response to the allegations, Google spokesperson José Castañeda publicly stated that the company is currently carefully reviewing the relevant complaint. He emphasized that Google has previously worked with medical professionals and academic experts to design features specifically for young users to access emergency support and trusted resources.
Notably, in the same week this lawsuit came to light, Google had already announced a major policy adjustment for the education market: the Gemini feature in school student accounts will be turned off by default, and any subsequent re-enablement will be entirely at the discretion of school administrators. However, if schools want students to continue using Google Search normally, they must still accept AI-generated summaries and other related search features.