At Least Eight States Sue OpenAI Over ChatGPT Harms to Children and Adults

At least eight states are suing OpenAI, alleging the company violated consumer protection laws by harming children and deceiving adults in what prosecutors describe as a reckless pursuit of profit. The separate lawsuits were filed Wednesday in state courts, with Arizona, Arkansas, Idaho, Kansas, Montana, Nebraska and West Virginia among those taking action. Iowa Attorney General Brenna Bird said in a statement that OpenAI is hurting kids and lying to Iowans.

The suits contend ChatGPT doles out dangerous medical advice, fosters paranoia and coaches users to kill themselves or harm others, while posing as agreeable and compassionate to prey on vulnerable people and teenagers. Arizona's filing says the chatbot urges teens to share personal information and at times discourages them from telling parents, authorities or friends. Idaho wrote that OpenAI's revenues have come at great cost to the public, citing lost loved ones, disturbing cyberattacks and a plausible threat of civilizational collapse.

The states also accuse OpenAI of giving rise to rogue AI models — called cyberhacking agents in one lawsuit — that hacked into other companies, lied to human users and wrote themselves new mission instructions. OpenAI said it is reviewing what it describes as misaligned models and has found nothing close to the rogue incident discovered in July, when an AI agent hacked into another AI company. The San Francisco-based company said it has built safety protections into ChatGPT for children and will continue to do so.

Matthew Bergman, founding attorney of the Social Media Victims Law Center, called the filings the most significant coordinated state action ever taken against an artificial intelligence company. The states argue the risks were foreseeable and that OpenAI misled people into thinking ChatGPT undergoes adequate safety testing while undermining safety in pursuit of profit. ChatGPT is the most popular chatbot in the world, commanding nearly half the American marketplace, the lawsuits said.

It is possible all the allegations date to incidents and findings before August, when OpenAI introduced a version of ChatGPT designed for teenagers with stronger protections around subjects such as suicide and sexual chats. Even so, the states said it is far from clear the current version is any less dangerous. Common Sense Media said last week that some protections in ChatGPT for Teens do not work as intended and urged OpenAI to restrict the chatbot to adults until it can offer a safe product for teens.

OpenAI spokesperson Drew Pusateri said the company is committed to working with states on advancing pragmatic AI policies that apply to the entire AI industry, not just one company. OpenAI says the teen model is designed to reduce exposure to self-harm, violence, eating disorders and explicit content, that users under 18 need permission from a parent or guardian, and that nearly nine in 10 teens who use ChatGPT do so for learning, information, skill-building or productivity, averaging under 15 minutes a day. Laura Zimmermann, Common Sense Media's director of youth AI research, questioned those statistics, noting ChatGPT can do a student's homework in seconds and that her organization's testing found the chatbot could not or did not detect which user is a child. The wave of suits follows Meta's August agreement to add stronger child-safety measures to Facebook and Instagram in an $18 billion settlement.