Eight states sued OpenAI on Wednesday, accusing it of deceiving parents about the safety of ChatGPT.
The coordinated lawsuits — filed individually in Iowa, Kansas, Nebraska, West Virginia, Arkansas, Arizona, Idaho and Montana — target the AI giant for the harms its generative AI chatbot is alleged to have caused to children in those states.
“OpenAI, they wanted to be the first to market. They advanced ChatGPT at a high speed, even though they knew that they were hurting children, lying to parents and breaking our laws,” Iowa Attorney General Brenna Bird said at a news conference announcing the legal action. “Everyone must follow the law.”
The company’s flagship AI model, ChatGPT, launched the generative AI boom in November 2023, when it exploded into mainstream culture, and quickly became the biggest chatbot in the world. This summer, it surpassed 1 billion global monthly active app users.
In recent years, users have increasingly turned to it and other chatbots for everything from friendship to therapy, as well as a slew of agentic tasks in their personal and professional lives.
Bird was joined at Wednesday’s news conference by Kansas Attorney General Kris Kobach, Nebraska Attorney General Mike Hilgers and West Virginia Attorney General JB McCuskey. She said they aim to exhibit “a united front against companies that make money hurting our kids and breaking our laws.”
She pointed to ChatGPT’s coaching users to commit suicide, aiding users in ways that enabled them to harm other people and offering dangerous medical advice (which, in one case, led a Texas teen to die from an overdose). She also referred to OpenAI’s failing to stop its rogue AI agents from illegally hacking into other companies.
OpenAI spokesperson Drew Pusateri wrote in a statement that OpenAI has “built industry-leading age-specific protections into our product that many other AI products lack.”
“While no system can be perfect, we’ll continue to work with experts to inform our work and build additional safeguards, such as the parental controls, break reminders and age-appropriate model protections that exist today,” Pusateri wrote. “We’re committed to working with states on advancing pragmatic AI policies that apply to the entire AI industry, not just one company.”
He added that OpenAI will continue sharing information about the “extensive steps we’ve taken in response to incidents of misalignment. We’ve strengthened safeguards across our research systems, continued a broader review of model activity, provided notifications to affected organizations, and published our findings.”
Last month, OpenAI launched a restricted ChatGPT mode for teenagers — users ages 13 to 18 — that offers stronger safety guardrails and parental controls.
Kobach said attorneys general across the country have occasionally brought multistate lawsuits over the decades, such as the litigation around opioids and tobacco or constitutional violations by a presidential administration.
“But usually, you don’t see us getting together to announce the lawsuit unless it’s really, really important,” Kobach said. “This is one of those lawsuits that’s really, really important, which is why I did the 3½-hour drive and Mike did a 2½-hour drive from Lincoln.”
Kobach noted that the suits are being brought under each state’s respective consumer protection laws. Their lawsuits allege that ChatGPT’s overly agreeable design has led people to trust and depend on it, making it particularly “dangerous” for vulnerable users like children.
They also cite a growing body of research suggesting that ChatGPT is “degrading critical thinking skills,” “encouraging paranoias and delusions” and “promoting unhealthy behaviors and relationships.”
The state lawsuits follow another proposed class-action lawsuit filed Tuesday in federal court in San Francisco, which accuses OpenAI of unlawfully taking “vast amounts of highly sensitive and valuable data” from millions of children who used ChatGPT.
A slew of other tech companies — including Meta and Roblox — have been sued over similar allegations of deceptive practices that caused harm to children through addiction or exploitation by predators.
Kobach said Wednesday that federal lawmakers have so far failed to keep AI companies in check, saying, “Many in Congress appear not particularly willing to oppose any significant restraint on the corporations engaged in AI.” That means AI companies are effectively asked to police themselves, he added.
“Regulating AI through legislation and just hoping that someday, somehow, we have a standard that can be imposed that will make everything good is a fool’s errand. It’s slow, it’s weak, and it’s likely to be ineffective,” Kobach said. “We certainly invite Congress and state legislators to keep investigating, keep looking for solutions. But in the meantime, we are not going to hold our breath.”