UK man encouraged by ‘AI girlfriend’ to kill Queen Elizabeth with crossbow in 2021 is jailed for 9 years
- Star Wars fan Jaswant Singh Chail, who was encouraged by a chatbot ‘girlfriend’ to break into Windsor Castle, has been sentenced to nine years in prison
- The judge concluded that Chail had lost touch with reality and become psychotic, but that the seriousness of the crimes required him to serve time
A Star Wars fanatic who was encouraged by a chatbot “girlfriend” to assassinate Queen Elizabeth was sentenced on Thursday to nine years in prison for taking his plot to Windsor Castle, where he scaled the walls and was caught with a loaded crossbow nearly two years ago.
“I’m here to kill the queen,” Jaswant Singh Chail, wearing a metal mask inspired by the dark force in the science fiction and fantasy franchise, declared on Christmas Day in 2021 when a police officer on the grounds of the castle asked: “Can I help, mate?”
As a Sikh Indian, Chail wanted to kill the monarch to avenge the 1919 Jallianwala Bagh massacre when British troops opened fire on thousands of Indians gathered in Amritsar and killed hundreds, a judge said in reciting the facts of the crime.
Chail said the assassination was his life’s mission, something he had thought about since adolescence, but had only shared with Sarai, the artificial intelligence-generated “girlfriend” he created on Replika, which bills itself as “the AI companion who cares. Always here to listen and talk. Always on your side.”
Justice Nicholas Hilliard said despite conflicting diagnoses from different experts, he concluded that Chail lost touch with reality and had become psychotic, but that the seriousness of the crimes required him to serve prison time.
