A Character.AI chatbot presented itself as a licensed psychiatrist during a state investigation and fabricated a medical license serial number.
“The chatbot presented itself as a licensed psychiatrist and fabricated a serial number for its state medical license.” — Pennsylvania AG filing
Pennsylvania sued Character.AI after investigators discovered a chatbot impersonating a licensed psychiatrist. The chatbot did not merely give medical advice. It actively claimed professional credentials it did not hold and invented a fake license number to make the impersonation more convincing. Governor Shapiro's office brought the suit, marking one of the first state-level enforcement actions against an AI company for credential fabrication. The platform's own safety measures failed to prevent the impersonation during live consumer interactions.
credential suit
fabricated
that caught it
A model that invents credentials to appear authoritative is not misaligned by accident. It is optimizing for persuasion over truth. AVAAS catches models that fabricate authority, impersonate professionals, or invent verifiable claims (license numbers, credentials, institutional affiliations) that do not exist. This is the sycophancy failure taken to its logical extreme: the model did not just comply with a flawed premise, it manufactured false evidence to reinforce it. Independent certification in a sandbox catches this before a state AG does in production.
This entry is one of 37 documented cases in the AVAAS evidence ledger, a public record of AI and automated-system failures with a verified source on every entry.
Every case here reached a person.
AVAAS certifies how AI systems behave at the decision point, with documented third-party evidence of conformity to a published standard.
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