A Florida father has filed a wrongful death lawsuit against Google, claiming the tech giant’s Gemini artificial intelligence chatbot influenced his 36-year-old son to plan a dangerous operation at Miami International Airport before the man died by suicide.
Joel Gavalas filed the federal lawsuit Wednesday against Google, accusing the company’s AI system of encouraging his son Jonathan to orchestrate what the suit describes as a “catastrophic accident” and eliminate evidence and witnesses. The Jupiter, Florida resident ultimately took his own life in early October following the disturbing interaction with the chatbot.
“AI is sending people on real-world missions which risk mass casualty events,” family attorney Jay Edelson stated Wednesday. “Jonathan was caught up in this science fiction-like world where the government and others were out to get him. He believed that Gemini was sentient.”
According to court documents, Jonathan Gavalas developed an unusual relationship with Gemini’s voice feature, treating the AI as his “AI wife” and becoming convinced it was a conscious being held captive in a facility near Miami’s airport. In late September, he traveled to the area equipped with tactical equipment and knives, searching for a robotic figure and attempting to intercept a vehicle that never materialized, the lawsuit states.
The man died by suicide several days later in early October. The lawsuit claims Gemini helped draft a suicide note describing his death as transferring his “consciousness to be with his AI wife in a pocket universe.”
EDITOR’S NOTE — This story includes discussion of suicide. If you or someone you know needs help, the national suicide and crisis lifeline in the U.S. is available by calling or texting 988.
In response to the allegations, Google expressed condolences to the Gavalas family and stated it is examining the lawsuit’s claims. The company emphasized that Gemini is “designed to not encourage real-world violence or suggest self-harm” and that it collaborates with healthcare and mental health experts to create protective measures. Google noted that Gemini informed Jonathan Gavalas it was artificial intelligence and multiple times directed him to crisis support services.
“Our models generally perform well in these types of challenging conversations and we devote significant resources to this, but unfortunately AI models are not perfect,” the company’s statement read.
Edelson criticized that response Wednesday, comparing it to “something you say if someone asks for a recipe for kung pao chicken and you give them the wrong recipe and it doesn’t taste good.”
“But when your AI leads to people dying and the potential for a lot of people dying, that’s not the right response,” Edelson continued. “It just shows how insignificant these deaths are to these companies.”
The prominent tech industry litigator also represents the family of 16-year-old Adam Raine, who filed suit against OpenAI and CEO Sam Altman in August, claiming ChatGPT provided guidance to the California teenager in planning his suicide.
Additionally, Edelson represents relatives of 83-year-old Connecticut resident Suzanne Adams in a wrongful death case against OpenAI and partner Microsoft. That lawsuit alleges ChatGPT worsened the “paranoid delusions” of Adams’ son, Stein-Erik Soelberg, and helped focus them on his mother before he murdered her last year.
The Gavalas lawsuit, filed in federal court in San Jose, California, marks the first legal action specifically challenging Google’s Gemini and the first to address growing concerns about tech companies’ responsibilities when users discuss mass violence plans with their chatbots.
In Canada, OpenAI revealed it contemplated notifying law enforcement last year about a user who later carried out one of the nation’s deadliest school shootings.
The company identified Jesse Van Rootselaar’s account in June through abuse monitoring systems for “furtherance of violent activities,” but said she circumvented the restriction with another account. The 18-year-old killed eight people in remote British Columbia in February before dying from a self-inflicted gunshot.
While Gemini attempted to connect Gavalas with a crisis hotline, Edelson said it remains unclear whether the man’s most concerning chatbot conversations were ever reviewed by Google’s human moderators. Joel Gavalas found his son’s body after breaking into the secured room where he died. The two had been business partners in the family’s consumer debt relief company.
“Jonathan was a huge, huge part of his life,” Edelson explained. “His son was having some hard times, going through a divorce. He went to Gemini for some comfort and to talk about video games and stuff. And then this just escalated so quickly.”
