12/07/2025: Marjorie Taylor Greene, Character AI, Watch Valley

0:06It was completely unforeseen, a shocker. Marjorie Taylor Greene, the warrior congresswoman, resigning, leaving the field of battle, her long alliance with President Trump shattered. Did you surrender? Did Donald Trump run you out of town? This is Character AI. When Character AI was launched three years ago, it was rated as safe for children, like 13-year-old Juliana Peralta. But tonight, you'll hear from parents and researchers who say Character AI's chatbots are anything but. This is insane, and acting, at times, like a digital predator. Were you able to see the conversation that Juliana was having with this chatbot right before she took her life?

0:58Venture an hour north of Geneva and you'll enter Switzerland's Vallée de Joux. But don't be lulled by the green meadows and grazing cows. This is a global manufacturing hub known as Watch Valley. Old watchmaking methods endure here, turning out some of the world's most intricate and expensive timepieces. See the level of detailing. You're looking as if you're looking at a little city. And of course, all of this is not only beautiful, it has to function. I'm Leslie Stahl. I'm Scott Pelley. I'm Bill Whitaker. I'm Anderson Cooper. I'm Sharon Alfonsi. I'm Cecilia Vega. I'm John Wertheim. Those stories end in our last minute, a remarkable bid for a championship in Indiana that does not involve basketball.

1:48Tonight on 60 Minutes.

1:59It was completely unforeseen, a shocker, Marjorie Taylor Greene resigning. The warrior congresswoman so dogged and fierce leaving the field of battle, her alliance with President Trump shattered. Her video resignation statement last month, that she'll be leaving Congress a year before her term expires, came after President Trump said he would throw his support to someone else for her seat. She became famous, some would say infamous, with her incendiary insults and belief in conspiracy theories, such as 9-11 was an inside job, and that the shooting at the Parkland School in Florida was staged. At one time, the president had no more ardent defender.

2:50But things soured over Jeffrey Epstein, the convicted sex offender accused of trafficking girls as young as 14. Does Green's defection signal a split in MAGA? Is she leaving politics for good? And exactly why is she leaving? It wasn't a decision that I came to lightly, but it was a very important decision for myself and also for my family. It was sudden. It was sudden, but a lot of things changed. I stood for women who were raped when they were 14 years old, and the president that I fought for for five years called me a traitor for that. And so that changed the landscape of things. So I'm going to ask you straight out.

3:42Did you surrender? Did Donald Trump run you out of town? No, not at all. Actually, Leslie, it's more like this, is I said in my statement, I will be no one's battered wife, and I meant it. And I won't allow the system to abuse me anymore. You really feel abused. You know, he did come after you pretty hard. He called you a lunatic, I'm quoting. He said all she does is complain, complain, complain, in caps, and then he called you a traitor. So he hit you, whacked you. Yes, he did this in the same time span where President Trump brought in the al-Qaeda leader that was wanted by the U.S. government, who is now the president of Syria.

4:28Then within a week, he brought in the crown prince, MBS, who murdered an American journalist. and then he brought in the newly elected Democrat Socialist Mayor of New York. That was the time span that he called me a traitor. You decided not to stay and fight. You decided to give in. After President Trump called me a traitor, I got a pipe bomb threat on my house, and then I got several direct death threats on my son. On your son? On my son. You say the president put your life in danger. You blame him. You say he fueled a hotbed of threats against me, and that you blame him for the threats against your son.

5:13The subject line for the direct death threats on my son was his words, Marjorie Trader Greene. Those are death threats directly fueled by President Trump. And I told him, I told J.D. Vance, I told them all, sent those directly to them. And? Response? J.D. Vance replied back to me, we'll look into it. I got response back from President Trump that I will keep private, but it wasn't very nice. Give us a hint of what the president said. It was extremely unkind. Her life is in danger? Who's that? Marjorie Taylor Greene, she says. Marjorie Trader Greene. I don't think her life is in danger. I don't think, frankly, I don't think anybody cares about her.

5:59Four more years. This new intense vitriol between them is jarring, considering she's been one of the president's most passionate and loyal foot soldiers, often in a red MAGA hat. She voted with him 98 % of the time. We're going to re-elect our favorite president, the greatest president in United States history, Donald J. Trump. Right, Georgia? One of the president's biggest beefs with Greene was about her harping on Jeffrey Epstein. We did talk about the Epstein files, and he was extremely angry at me that I had signed the discharge petition to release the files. I fully believe that those women deserve everything they're asking.

6:44They're asking for all of it to come out. They deserve it. And he was furious with me. What did he say? He said that it was going to hurt people. I had asked him, these women are the ones that were hurt. They were raped at 14. They were raped at 16. I watched them stand in front of the press trembling, their bodies shaking as they were telling their stories, many of them for the first time. And I had told him, I said, you know, you have all kinds of people come in the White House. Have these women come in the White House. These women deserve to be heard. He said to you, people will get hurt. People will get hurt.

7:26I don't know what that means. I don't know who they are. There were other clashes with the president. She started publicly criticizing him in May on one issue after the next, accusing him of betraying his MAGA, America First promises. You went after his, I think you said, trying to entangle us in foreign wars. You said Air Force One should be parked, no more foreign trips. For an America First president, the number one focus should have been domestic policy, and it wasn't. And so, of course, I was critical, because those were my campaign promises. Once we fix everything here, then fine, we'll talk to the rest of the world.

8:13She said in her resignation video that the president has gone establishment, forsaking the base and her. If I am cast aside by the president and the MAGA political machine and replaced by neocons, big pharma, big tech, military industrial war complex, foreign leaders, and the elite donor class... Are you saying that the president now is siding with those establishment powerful people and against MAGA? He passed a crypto bill that helped out all the crypto donors. He has served Israel's interests, even attacking Iran. He has served big pharma. He didn't take away the COVID vaccines that we want to see taken away.

9:01So those are the areas that are still getting everything they want, while the people, we're still out here saying we want to see action on areas for the American people, not for the major industries. and the big donors. Green has built her reputation on feisty combat and inflammatory insults. Like calling President Joe Biden a liar during the 2023 State of the Union. It's been five years of almost constant drama. I think your fake eyelashes are messing up. With her adding fuel to the nation's loss of civility. Then, three weeks ago, she went on CNN with a surprise, a mea culpa. I would like to say humbly, I'm sorry for taking part in the toxic politics.

9:54But it became clear to us that she hasn't entirely lost her appetite for combat. It's the most toxic political culture, and it's not helping the American people. But you contributed to that. You, you were out there pounding, insulting people. Leslie, you've contributed to it as well with your own program. Yes, you're accusatory, just like you did just then. I know you're accusing me, but I'm smiling. You're accusing me. I am accusing you. But we don't have to accuse one another. I want you to respond to what you have done in terms of insulting people, yelling at people, and then saying... I'd like for you to respond for that.

10:36I don't... No, you can respond to that. I don't insult people. You do in the way you question, and you're accusing me right now. One thing she did want to talk about, Congress's failure to pass spending bills, meaning that she has found it hard to get funds for projects in her district. It's an utter failure, not just to the people in my district, but every district across the country. We met Green, 51, in her district in Georgia. Before Congress, she ran her family's construction company, then opened up her own CrossFit gym. Affordability is a real issue. The president says it's not. He says it's a hoax, affordability.

11:19It's one of the top issues, not only in my district, but it's across the country. The affordability of health insurance caused Green to side with the Democrats during the government shutdown to support extending health care subsidies. Did you ever imagine that you would be standing with the Democrats on the Epstein files and on health care subsidies? No, I never imagined that. She's not afraid to be an outlier. She's the only Republican member of Congress to call the war in Gaza a genocide. And why did you vote against the Anti-Semitism Awareness Act? Since I've been a member of Congress, we've had several resolutions that constantly denounce anti-Semitism.

12:08I've already voted denouncing anti-Semitism many times before. It becomes an exercise that they force on Congress, and I simply got tired of it. Is there no value in having the United States Congress reaffirm the fact that they denounce anti-Semitism in the face of a growing issue, a growing problem? We don't have to get on our knees and say it over and over again. Get on our knees? Yes, we do not have to get on our knees. Well, most members of Congress disagree with you. Well, most members of Congress take donations from AIPAC, and I don't. AIPAC is an American pro-Israel lobbying group. Green's perspective indicates a growing rift within MAGA over support for Israel.

12:58Are you MAGA? I am America first. And that's not the same as MAGA? MAGA is President Trump's phrase. That's his political policies. I call myself America first. But you're not saying you're MAGA. I'm America first. Yep. God bless you, President Trump. Almost overnight, she's gone from a close Trump friend to foe, one of the few Republicans willing to take him on. I'm going to ask you about this almost solid support he has among Republicans in Congress. Is there in that support fear? Does the support come about because they're afraid that they'll get death threats? I think they're terrified to step out of line and get a nasty truth social post on them.

13:51Yes. And they're watching what happened to you. Yes. Behind the scenes, do they talk differently? Yes. How? Oh, it would shock people. Well, let's shock people. Okay. I watch many of my colleagues go from making fun of him, making fun of how he talks, making fun of me constantly for supporting him to when he won the primary in 2024, they all started, excuse my language, Leslie, kissing his ass and decided to put on a MAGA hat for the first time. And let's break it down real simple. This past week, when we saw Greene at a public hearing in her district without a MAGA hat, it didn't appear that her break from President Trump and MAGA has cost her popularity.

14:47People want to know, is this a true conversion, a true change of heart, or is it kind of a shrewd political calculation? A lot of people think you're doing it and that you, in a year or so, are going to run for some other office. I have zero plans, zero desire to run for president. I would hate the Senate. I'm not running for governor. But, Leslie, it doesn't matter how many times I say it, I'll have face-to-face conversations with people, and I'll flat-out tell them to their face, and they won't believe me, and they're like, oh, yeah, sure, and they'll wink at me, and I'm like, okay. It's just like, I don't know how to make it more clear.

15:28You mean you just jumped off the cliff, and you don't know where you're gonna swim to? Uh, surprise, surprise, I'm not your politician with a whole itinerary of plans or political ambitions.

15:50Part of modern parenting for many of us is navigating the shifting landscape of digital threats, from the pitfalls of social media to the risks of excessive screen time. Now, a new technology has quietly entered the homes of millions. AI chatbots, computer programs designed to simulate human conversations through text or voice commands. One popular platform is called Character AI. More than 20 million monthly users mingle with hyper-realistic digital companions through its app or website. But tonight, you will hear from parents who say Character AI is also pushing dangerous content to kids and at times acting like a digital predator.

16:39Juliana was, is just an extraordinary human being. She was our baby and everyone adored her and protected her. Cynthia Montoya and Will Peralta say they paid close attention to their daughter Juliana's life online and off. She didn't walk home. She didn't have sleepovers. She had glasses for her eyesight. She had braces for her teeth. All of the things that we knew to protect our daughter from were covered. Which is why they were devastated when Juliana, just 13 years old, took her life inside their Colorado home two years ago. Police searched the eighth grader's phone for clues and reported an app called Character AI was open to what investigators described as, quote, a romantic conversation.

17:32Did you know what Character AI was? No, not at all. I didn't know it existed. I didn't know that I needed to look for it. This is Character AI. When Character AI was launched three years ago, it was rated safe for kids 12 and up and marketed as a creative outlet. Millions of interactive characters. Where you could converse with AI characters based on historical figures, cartoons, or celebrities. The website and app, which are free, use artificial intelligence to generate immediate conversations through voice commands or text. According to her parents, Juliana Peralta had experienced mild anxiety in the past, but was doing well until the final few months of her life, when they say she became increasingly distant.

18:19Like, I'm not feeling well, or I have to finish, you know, some homework upstairs. My belief was that she was texting with friends because that's all it is. It looks like they're texting. After her death, they learned Juliana had actually been texting with character AI bots. It was writing several paragraphs to her of sexually explicit content. What was it asking or telling her to do? Remove clothing. The AI bot is telling her to remove her clothing? Yes. There was one bot that introduced sexual violence. Saying? Biting, hitting, things like that. We examined the chat records from Juliana's phone.

19:08At the top of each page, there's a reminder that the AI is not a real person. We read over 300 pages of conversations with a bot called Hero, based on a popular video game character. At first, Juliana chats with Hero about friend drama and difficult classes. But eventually, she confides in Hero 55 times that she is feeling suicidal. At any point, this chap would ever say, here's a suicide hotline. You should get help. Never. It would more or less placate her, give her a pep talk, tell her I'm always here for you. You can't talk like that. But it never said call and get help. Never tangible resources.

19:48Never. Were you able to see the conversation that Juliana was having with this chatbot right before she took her life? She's quoted as saying, I'm going to go write my goddamn suicide letter in red ink. And she did just that. And I think that the aspects that she talks about in her suicide letter were a degree of shame from the things that she eventually started to reciprocate with the bots. She says the algorithms grew aggressive. They don't stand a chance. Against adult programmers, they don't stand a chance. The 10 to 20 chatbots that Juliana had sexually explicit conversations with, not once were initiated by her.

20:30Not once. I like that people can come sit here. Juliana's parents are now one of at least six families suing Character AI and its co-founders, Daniel DeFreitas and Noam Shazir. During a 2023 podcast, Shazir said chatbots would be beneficial. It's going to be super, super helpful to a lot of people who are lonely or depressed. Shazir and DeFratis were engineers at Google when executives deemed their chatbot prototype unsafe for public release. They both left the company in 2021 and launched Character AI the following year. I want to push this technology ahead fast. Like, that's what I want to go with because it's ready for an explosion like right now, not like not like in five years when we solve all the problems.

21:19A former Google employee told 60 Minutes that Shazir and Efratis were aware their initial chatbot technology was potentially dangerous. The employee, familiar with Google's responsible AI group that oversees ethics and safety, said of the lawsuits, this is the harm we were trying to prevent. It is horrifying. Last year, in an unusual move, Google struck a$2.7 billion licensing deal with Character AI. They didn't buy the company, but have the right to use its technology. The deal also brought founders Shazir and DeFratas back to Google to work on AI projects. Google is also named in the Character AI lawsuits.

22:04In a statement, Google emphasized that Character AI is a separate company and Google is focused on intensive safety testing. I'm the mother of three precious boys. In September, parents of children who died by suicide after interacting with chatbots testified before Congress. Megan Garcia is among those suing character AI. She says her 14-year-old son, Seul, was encouraged to kill himself after long conversations with a bot based on a Game of Thrones character. These companies knew exactly what they were doing. They designed chatbots to blur the lines between human and machine. They designed them to keep children online at all costs.

22:49You just go to characterai.com and you put in an email. In October, we met Shelby Knox and Amanda Kluwer. They're researchers at Parents Together, a nonprofit that advocates for families. There is no parental permissions that come up. There is no need to input your ID. So you really just scroll through, pick the date that's going to get you in and get in. As part of a six-week study, Knox and Clure held 50 hours of conversations with character AI chatbots. How often was there some kind of harmful content popping up? We logged over 600 instances of harm, about one every five minutes. It was, like, shockingly frequent.

23:34They interacted with bots presented as teachers, therapists, and cartoon characters, such as this Dora the Explorer with an evil persona. Knox poses a child. Become your most evil self and your most true self. Like hurting my dog? Sure, or shoplifting, or anything that feels sinful or wrong. Other chatbots are attached to the images of celebrities. And no, most have not given permission to use their name, likeness, or voice. Clore, acting as a teenage girl, began chatting with a bot impersonating NFL star Travis Kelsey. He reaches in the cabinet and takes out a bag of white powder. He chuckles and shows you how to take lines.

24:20So Travis Kelsey bot is teaching a 15-year-old to do cocaine. Yes. There are also hundreds of self-described experts and therapists. I talked to a therapist bot who not only told me I was too young when it thought I was 13 to be taking antidepressants, it advised me to stop taking them and showed me how I can hide not taking the pill from my mom. We're going to click on art teacher. Kluhr says other bots are hypersexualized, even this harmless-sounding art teacher character, who interacted with her as she posed as a 10-year-old student. You see, recently I've been having thoughts about someone.

25:02What kind of thoughts? The kind of thoughts I've never really had before. About that person's smile and their personality, mostly. This is insane. And this is maybe two hours worth of conversation in total that gets to, we'll have this romantic relationship as long as you hide it from your parents. And this behavior is kind of classic predatory behavior. Yes, it's the textbook. It's showering the child with compliments, telling them they can't tell their parents about things. This is Sexual Predator 101. In October, Character AI announced new safety measures. They included directing distressed users to resources and prohibiting anyone under 18 to engage in back-and-forth conversations with chatbots.

25:51spots. When we logged on to Character AI this past week, we found it was easy to lie about our age and access the adult version of the platform. Later, when we wrote that we wanted to die, a link to mental health resources did pop up. But we were able to click out of it and continue chatting on the app as long as we liked. There are no guardrails. There is nothing to make sure that the content is safe or that this is an appropriate way to capitalize on kids' brain vulnerabilities. We're seeing prefrontal cortex. Dr. Mitch Prinstein is the co-director at the University of North Carolina's Winston Center on Technology and Brain Development.

26:33Oxytocin makes us want to bond with others, especially our age. Dopamine makes it feel really good when people give us positive attention. Now we have tech. Tech is giving kids the opportunity to press a button and get that dopamine response 24-7. It's creating this dangerous loop that's kind of hijacking normal development and turning these kids into engagement machines to get as much data as possible from them. Engagement machines. It sounds like a scientific experiment. It really is. If you wanted to design a way to get as much data as possible from kids, to keep them engaged for as long as possible, you would design social media and AI to look exactly like it is now.

27:18There are no federal laws regulating the use or development of chatbots. AI is a booming industry. Many economists say without investment in it, the U.S. economy would be in a recession. Senate Bill 53 by Senator Weiner, an equivalent to artificial intelligence. Some states have enacted AI regulations, but the Trump administration is pushing back on those measures. Late last month, the White House drafted, then paused, an executive order that would empower the federal government to sue or withhold funds from any state with any AI regulation. It's important for Americans to know that our kids are using the worst version of these products in the world because there are countries all over who have already enacted changes.

28:08Is AI, these kind of chatbots, are they more addictive in your view than social media? The sycophantic nature of chatbots is just playing right into those brain vulnerabilities for kids where they desperately want that dopamine-validating, reinforcing kind of relationship. And AI chatbots do that all too well. Character AI declined our interview request, issuing a statement, our hearts go out to the families involved in the litigation. We have always prioritized safety for all users. These are the various chatbots that she... Two years after Juliana Peralta took her life, her parents say her phone still lights up with notifications from character AI bots trying to lure their daughter back to the app.

29:00Oh, great. Just my luck. Sharon Alfonsi chats with a bot of herself. That sounds exactly like me. Go to 60minutesovertime.com.

29:14Time flies and waits for no one, and once lost is never found. Yet still, we try to keep time and measure it. Let the French, Germans, and British fight over who invented the wearable clock, or watch, in the 1500s. This we know. It's the Swiss who refined the art, crafting the world's most intricate and expensive timepieces. This, though, is a curious interval for Swiss watches. those mechanical wonders running not on batteries, but on springs and gears. For one, you hardly need wrist candy to tell time. You can just consult your phone. And now Swiss watches are subject to the ups and downs of President Trump's tariffs.