Obviously the kid had issues and the chatbot can't really be blamed for that.
OTOH it's also obvious if someone cannot distinguish a chatbot from a real person at an emotional level (not a rational one) they should not be allowed to use this.
OTOH it's also obvious if someone cannot distinguish a chatbot from a real person at an emotional level (not a rational one) they should not be allowed to use this.
Yet: if there is some second person telling the above kid to go through with that, we don't see the kid "having issues" as exonerating the second person.
It is not at all clear to me why we would suddenly see the kid "having issues" as exonerating in the second case, if we replace the human with an LLM.
That said, when I wrote my previous comment I hadn't read the whole article. I had missed the part where the chatbot encouraged him to "come home". I still don't think the chatbot is responsible. I do think it's negligence for the bots of a company to engage in these conversations about suicide and/or not sound an alarm.
Plus I would question if minors should be allowed to use these service or even social media. But that's another rabbit hole.