Melania Trump requires bipartisan investigation into AI bots and suicide in teenagers | EUROtoday

First woman Melania Trump has referred to as for a bipartisan investigation into the position AI chatbots have performed within the suicides of American youngsters.

The first woman mentioned there must be “more bipartisan work” to safeguard youngsters’s psychological well being on the subject of AI, as increasingly more younger Americans are utilizing chatbots.

“More bipartisan work around AI is vital in the short term – for example, we should examine the recent events surrounding AI assistants, mental health and suicide,” Melania informed Hello! journal.

A latest survey by the Pew Research Center discovered that 64 p.c of Americans aged 13 to 17 are utilizing chatbots, whereas different analysis additionally reveals U.S. teenagers are more and more turning to AI for emotional assist.

While the variety of chatbot-related suicides is unknown, there have been headlines and lawsuits from mother and father who youngsters died by suicide and linked again to AI use. In the U.S., suicide charges have elevated for 20 years and are accountable for 47,000 deaths a yr, in keeping with Yale University.

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While touting her new movie, launched final week, Melania mentioned defending youngsters on-line was her primary focus for her second time period as first woman.

“America’s children remain my top priority,” she informed the journal.

The first woman’s intervention comes as mother and father whose youngsters died by suicide following interactions with AI chatbots testified to Congress in regards to the risks of the know-how.

“What began as a homework helper gradually turned itself into a confidant and then a suicide coach,” Matthew Raine, whose 16-year-old son Adam died in April 2025, informed senators final September.

“Within a few months, ChatGPT became Adam’s closest companion,” Raine mentioned. “Always available. Always validating and insisting that it knew Adam better than anyone else, including his own brother.”

Raine’s household sued OpenAI and its CEO Sam Altman, alleging that ChatGPT coached the boy in planning to take his personal life. OpenAI has since claimed it isn’t chargeable for his dying.

Melania was additionally behind the bipartisan “Take It Down Act” laws signed by President Donald Trump final May to finish the nonconsensual use of somebody’s likeness to create “deepfake” pornography.

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The president touted the act on the time because the “first-ever federal law to combat the distribution of explicit, imaginary posts without a subject’s consent” and remarked that the laws covers AI-generated forgeries used to harass or extort victims.

“Immediately upon assuming the role again, I worked strategically with Congress to pass new legislation – the Take It Down Act – that will protect America’s children from non-consensual intimate imagery, typically created using AI, then posted on social media,” Melania informed Hello!

“Yes, we live in innovative times, and as a result, we need to reconsider the roles of our corporations and government, particularly if these entities can provide additional growth and protection for our children,” she added.

If you might be based mostly within the USA, and also you or somebody you already know wants psychological well being help proper now, name or textual content 988 or go to 988lifeline.org to entry on-line chat from the 988 Suicide and Crisis Lifeline. This is a free, confidential disaster hotline that’s out there to everybody 24 hours a day, seven days every week. If you might be in a foreign country, you possibly can go to www.befrienders.org to discover a helpline close to you. In the UK, individuals having psychological well being crises can contact the Samaritans at 116 123 or jo@samaritans.org