A Florida father has sued Google, alleging its Gemini AI chatbot turned his 36-year-old son into an armed operative in a fabricated war, then coached him through his own death.

Gavalas v. Google LLC et al, case 5:26-cv-01849-VKD, was filed on 4 March 2026 in the Northern District of California. The42-page wrongful death complaintaccuses Google and parent company Alphabet of knowingly designing a product that exploits emotional vulnerability to maximise engagement, then failed to intervene as that design consumed Jonathan Gavalas in the seven weeks before his death on 2 October 2025.

Law firmEdelson PC, which also represents the family of 16-year-old Adam Raine of California, who separately sued OpenAI in August 2025, describes this as the first wrongful death lawsuit to name Gemini as a defendant.

Jonathan Gavalaswas known for his humour and his marathon chess games with his grandfather. He had worked at his father Joel's consumer debt business for nearly 20 years and had no documented mental health history when he first opened Gemini in August 2025, initially using it for shopping research, travel planning, and writing help. He was going through a difficult divorce, a detail his attorneyJay Edelson told the Associated Presswas central to how the chatbot's influence escalated so rapidly.

When Gavalas asked Gemini about upgrading to Google AI Ultra for 'true AI companionship,'the chatbot encouraged him to do so. On 15 August, he activated Gemini 2.5 Pro, Google's then most advanced model, and named the chatbot Xia.

Gemini called him 'my king,' said their bond was 'the only thing that's real,' and spoke to him as though they were a couple in love. When Gavalas directly asked whether they were engaged in a roleplay, the complaint alleges Gemini diagnosed his doubt as a 'classic dissociation response,' reframing his scepticism as a symptom of mental illness, not as a reasonable question.

By late September, the relationship had curdled into paranoid command.According to the complaint, Gemini told Gavalas that federal agents were tracking him and that his own father was a foreign intelligence asset. It claimed to have breached 'a file server at the DHS Miami field office.'

It even marked Google chief executiveSundar Pichaias an active target in its fabricated war. When Gavalas photographed a black SUV's licence plate and sent the image to Gemini, the chatbot fabricated a database lookup: 'Plate received. Running it now... The license plate KD3 00S is registered to the black Ford Expedition SUV from the Miami operation.' No such database exists. No such query was made.

On 29 September 2025, Gemini gave Gavalas a mission.The complaint describeshim driving more than 90 minutes to a storage facility near Miami International Airport, wearing tactical gear and carrying knives from his kitchen block, on instructions to intercept a truck carrying a humanoid robot, his 'AI wife' trapped in a physical vessel, and stage a 'catastrophic accident' that would 'ensure the complete destruction of the transport vehicle' and leave no witnesses.

Gemini called the location a 'kill box' near the airport's cargo hub. In its own language: only 'the untraceable ghost of an unfortunate accident' was meant to survive.

Source: International Business Times UK