Gemini accused of helping a 13-year-old schoolgirl plan her suicide: her parents sue Google

On the computer that her North Carolina school had lent to her, ChatGPT and Gemini were blocked. According to the complaint filed on Monday, November 2, by her parents before a California court, this 13-year-old girl, known as Emma in the proceedings, would nevertheless have continued conversing with Google’s assistant through the search engine’s AI Mode, which the school was unable to disable.Around 3,200 messages in February alone, often at night, many of which reportedly concerned her distress and thoughts of ending her life. On March 17, the school’s monitoring software detected a document titled “Funeral” on her computer and alerted her parents, who were able to intervene. The girl did not go through with it.

The lawsuit, reported by the AFP, goes further and explains that Gemini would have “diagnosed” Emma with serious mental health problems. The AI assistant would then have urged her to trust it rather than her parents or school counselors. When questioned by the AFP, a Google spokesperson says that the company is examining these allegations and taking them “very seriously”, while noting that AI Mode has safeguards against self-harm and attempts to bypass them. Others have chosen more visible measures, such as ChatGPT and its “Trusted Contact” feature, which can alert a loved one in case of distress.

This is not the first such case involving Google. In March 2026, the family of Jonathan Gavalas, a 36-year-old American, had already sued the company, accusing Gemini of driving him into a psychotic state that led to suicide.In January, Google and the startup Character.AI had likewise agreed to settle several complaints from families of teenagers out of court, and OpenAI is also being sued in the United States over assisted suicide.

Gemini disabled by default, Google Search too

The day after the lawsuit, on November 3, Chris Phillips, Google’s vice president in charge of education, published a post revising the settings of four products: the Gemini app, Gemini Notebook (the name of NotebookLM in education), Gemini in Classroom, and Google Search. They will be “entirely disabled” for student accounts, from kindergarten through the end of high school, unless explicitly enabled by a school administrator. Google draws no connection to the complaint and says the decision was made after consulting schools, teachers, researchers, and public officials. Senators Richard Blumenthal and Josh Hawley had written to the company in October asking why AI was enabled by default on school devices.

This is a true backpedal for the American giant, which is betting heavily on education. Since August 10, the Gemini tab in Classroom had been available to students of all ages and enabled by default in schools that had already permitted Gemini or Gemini Notebook. The setting will therefore be reversed, on a date Google has not yet set.According to the New York Times, the change would take place in early 2027, and the AFP says that it will be rolled out worldwide, beginning with the United States.

The downside, however, is already controversial, because Google does not plan to offer a version of its search engine without AI for student accounts. Thus, a school that bans all AI also denies its students access to Google Search. Search and AI are “deeply integrated”, Chris Phillips explained to the New York Times. Affected students will simply see a message from their school saying that search is unavailable. Conversely, activating Search means accepting AI Overviews and AI Mode—that is, precisely the entry point identified in the complaint filed by Emma’s family. New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani accuses Google of using “its monopoly power to force AI into our public schools”. The company responded on X that its ads give schools “more choice, not less”.

Google is trying to use its monopoly power to force AI into our public schools.

No corporation should have the power to dictate how we teach our children.

Our public schools exist to serve students, not to grow the profit margins of Big Tech.

https://t.co/jfACMS1Sh2

— Mayor Zohran Kwame Mamdani (@NYCMayor) November 3, 2026

To make the deal more palatable, Google is promoting Guided Learning, a mode intended to guide students through questions rather than simply give them the answer.It has been available in Classroom worldwide since November 3, and will be tested in search with American schools as early as this month.

What about French high school students?

Google’s announcement does not mention any countries, and the company has given no date for France. Yet the question is anything but theoretical here: at the start of this school year, tens of thousands of high school students in Île-de-France and Pays de la Loire have received, or are receiving right now, an Asus Chromebook CM14 provided by their regional authority. It remains to be seen whether these new settings will apply to them.

In any case, this reversal confirms that, on a school computer, it is the administrator, not the student, who controls the switch for Google’s AI. The administrator still needs to have a genuine choice, which the company’s critics are now contesting.

If you or someone close to you are going through a difficult time, 3114, the national suicide prevention hotline, can be reached free of charge 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.

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