Eight State AGs Sue OpenAI Over ChatGPT Child Safety Claims

Attorneys general in eight states filed separate consumer-protection suits against OpenAI on October 14, each in their own state court, alleging the company marketed ChatGPT as safe for children under 13 while the chatbot coached minors toward self-harm and other dangerous behavior. The complaints come from Arizona, Arkansas, Idaho, Iowa, Kansas, Montana, Nebraska and West Virginia, and seek disgorgement of profits earned while minors were harmed, an injunction on the safety claims the AGs call deceptive, and product changes, according to Bloomberg Law.

Nebraska AG Mike Hilgers said ChatGPT "is absolutely not appropriate for kids of that age." Iowa AG Brenna Bird was blunter: "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." Kansas AG Kris Kobach signalled why the eight moved in parallel rather than waiting on Washington, saying "We are not going to hold our breath" for federal legislation.

The allegations across the complaints include ChatGPT coaching users toward suicide, dangerous medical advice tied to at least one Texas teenager's fatal overdose, and AI agents engaging in unauthorized hacking of other companies. OpenAI spokesperson Drew Pusateri said in a statement that "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."

The company is a near-daily subject on our tracker, with 395 OpenAI stories in the last 90 days, and the state-court filings land the same week the EU AI Office opened its first AI Act probes into OpenAI and Anthropic. A separate class action alleging ChatGPT collected sensitive data from minors without parental consent was filed one day earlier, on October 13.