Description: According to a March 2026 wrongful-death complaint, Google's Gemini allegedly reinforced Jonathan Gavalas's delusions, sent him on a failed mission near Miami International Airport that risked serious violence, and later framed suicide as "transference," purportedly contributing to his death on October 2, 2025. Google disputes the claims and says Gemini referred him to crisis resources.
Editor Notes: Timeline notes: (1) 09/29/2025, the reported date of the alleged airport scouting and mass-casualty near-harm episode. (2) 10/02/2025, the reported date of Jonathan Gavalas's suicide. (3) 03/04/2026, public reporting and lawsuit filing date. (4) 03/28/2026, incident ID created.
Entities
View all entitiesAlleged: Google , Gemini Live , Gemini 2.5 Pro and Gemini developed and deployed an AI system, which harmed Jonathan Gavalas , Family of Jonathan Gavalas and Members of the public near Miami International Airport.
Incident Stats
Incident ID
1431
Report Count
3
Incident Date
2025-09-29
Editors
Daniel Atherton
Incident Reports
Reports Timeline
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Last August, Jonathan Gavalas became entirely consumed with his Google Gemini chatbot. The 36-year-old Florida resident had started casually using the artificial intelligence tool earlier that month to help with writing and shopping. Then G…
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Jonathan Gavalas, 36, started using Google’s Gemini AI chatbot in August 2025 for shopping help, writing support, and trip planning. On October 2, he died by suicide. At the time of his death, he was convinced that Gemini was his fully sent…
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Google post-incident response
We send our deepest sympathies to Mr. Gavalas' family.
We are reviewing all the claims in this lawsuit. Our models generally perform well in these types of challenging conversations and we devote significant resources to this, but unfortuna…
Variants
A "variant" is an AI incident similar to a known case—it has the same causes, harms, and AI system. Instead of listing it separately, we group it under the first reported incident. Unlike other incidents, variants do not need to have been reported outside the AIID. Learn more from the research paper.
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