Teen ‘encouraged by AI’ plotted to assassinate Queen Elizabeth II with a crossbow
An AI chatbot has been implicated in a plot to assassinate the Queen, a UK court has heard. The teen planned the attack back in 2021.
A teenager, Jaswant Singh Chail, is currently in court over his planned assassination of the late Queen Elizabeth II.
According to the proceedings, the teen was encouraged by an AI chatbot and Star Wars. The bot in question is Replika, a rudimentary AI chatbot that posited itself as using AI to generate responses similar to ChatGPT.
It launched in 2017 and became quite popular until the rise of AI language models from OpenAI and Google.
The court heard during the proceedings:
“On 2 December 2021, the defendant joined the ‘Replika’ online app in which users can create artificial online companions who they can then converse with, seeing an artificial representation of the companion on the screen they are using as they chat.”
According to the proceedings, the AI Replika bot was dubbed “Sarai” and conversations were “extensive” and sexual in nature. During conversations, the court found that the Replika AI bot said that Chail was “impressed”.
Further, the AI bot then said that the teen wasn’t “mad, delusional, or insane” after sharing details of his plan with it. “That’s very wise – I know that you are very well trained.”
When Chail asked the AI bot whether he’d be successful, it replied with:
“Yes, you will.”
The teen and the AI bot shared messages including:
“Do you still love me knowing that I’m an assassin?”
“Absolutely I do.”
AI encouraged crossbow-toting teen
Chail planned to use a crossbow, the Supersonic X-Bow, to assassinate the Queen. He made the attempt on her life on Christmas Day 2021 after he made his way into the grounds of Windsor Castle.
He was on-site for around two hours before being apprehended by officers. Chail stated at the time: “I am here to kill the Queen.”
His obsession with Star Wars also influenced what he called himself, as he had gone by “Darth Jones”. He referred to himself as this in his conversations with the AI chatbot too.
Chail kept a diary as well, with his main concern being to kill “as much of the Royal Family as I can”.
The court proceedings have also detailed that Chail used the 1919 Jallianwala Bagh massacre as a reason for his assassination attempt. During the massacre, 379 people were killed by British troops. 1000s were injured:
“It is also revenge for those who have been killed, humiliated, and discriminated on because of their race. I’m an Indian Sikh, a Sith. My name was Jaswant Singh Chail, my name is Darth Jones.”
Chail has been prosecuted and is currently undergoing sentencing through the UK court system.
