Reading the article, there's not enough evidence for your assertion about the author's integrity to warrant a cutesy, sarcastic tone considering the gravity of the topic (a child's suicide). There would have to be a lot.

Read the article, the kid's spiral coincided with him hooking up with eDanerys. The chatbot kept agitating the kid to commit suicide, too

The agitations there are certainly rather mild. The parents are out sharing the worst examples they could find, and there's nothing really that damning or explicit. The parents noticing it coincided with his use of the ai (though in reality that connection probably was made after the fact), but also that time period was when the boy was 13 and into 14, it's a common time for significant behavioral changes.