When AI Becomes a Confidant: Responsibility and Accountability When Chatbots Cause Harm

AI chatbots and companion technologies are rapidly moving beyond simple tools for finding information or completing tasks: people turn to them for friendship, emotional and mental health support and advice, customer service, education, and access to justice. What are the opportunities, and what makes these technologies genuinely useful or beneficial? At the same time, increasingly human-like interactions have raised troubling questions about harmful advice, emotional dependency, manipulation, self-harm, impersonation, and other unintended consequences. When these systems cause harm, who should be responsible? What risks and legal obligations should companies anticipate when developing and deploying the technology? This interdisciplinary conversation will explore the promise and pitfalls of AI companions, emerging approaches to accountability and liability, and what responsible design and deployment of these technologies might look like.

Presented by the Daniels Fund Ethics Initiative Collegiate Program at Colorado Law and Silicon Flatirons.

The Silicon Flatirons Center for Law, Technology, and Entrepreneurship is an interdisciplinary research center at the University of Colorado Law School.