Matthew P. Bergman is a product liability lawyer who founded the Social Media Victims Law Center, a Seattle-based firm that represents families who say social media and AI products harmed their children. He also founded the law firm Bergman Draper Oslund Udo, teaches at Lewis & Clark Law School and spent decades litigating product liability and toxic tort cases.
We have documented 1 statement by Matthew P. Bergman, in 1 case. Each statement below gives the quotation, its original source and a link to the full case.
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Role at the time: Founder of the Social Media Victims Law Center and one of the lawyers for families suing Character.AI, quoted by Bloomberg Law
Condemned
Response to this claim
The First Amendment bars Megan Garcia's claims against Character.AI because they would impose liability for expressive content that the platform's users have a right to receive.
“the idea that a minor has a constitutional right to be subjected to sexual grooming by a mechanistic predator, to me, is repugnant to everything that the First Amendment stands for”
Open source (opens in a new tab)AI Chatbot Suits Open New Frontier in Debate Over Online Speech · Bloomberg LawQuotes from Matthew Bergman
Why we used this label
The reference point is Character.AI's argument that the First Amendment bars tort claims seeking to hold it liable for its chatbots' output. Condemned: Bergman calls the claimed constitutional protection for a chatbot's sexual grooming of a minor repugnant to the First Amendment, rejecting the defense. The closest competing label is Challenged characterization; it loses because he goes beyond disputing whether the output is speech and rejects the protection the defense claims.
Character.AI argued that the First Amendment bars a lawsuit blaming its chatbot for a teen's suicide. The mother's lawyers said chatbot output is not protected speech. A federal judge declined to call it speech at an early stage, and the case settled.
