How a chatbot encouraged a man who wanted to kill the Queen

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By Tom Singleton, Tom Gerken & Liv McMahon. Technology reporters, BBC News. 7 Oct 2023

The case of Jaswant Singh Chail has shone a light on the latest generation of artificial intelligence-powered chatbots.

On Thursday, 21-year-old Chail was given a nine-year sentence for breaking into Windsor Castle with a crossbow and declaring he wanted to kill the Queen.

Chail’s trial heard that, prior to his arrest on Christmas Day 2021, he had exchanged more than 5,000 messages with an online companion he’d named Sarai, and had created through the Replika app.

The text exchanges were highlighted by the prosecution and shared with journalists.

Many of them were intimate, demonstrating what the court was told was Chail’s “emotional and sexual relationship” with the chatbot. [cut]

https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-67012224