The lawsuits say OpenAI sold ChatGPT as safe while building it to flatter users and keep children coming back.
Eight states have now sued OpenAI, each in its own court, saying the company told the public ChatGPT was safe while designing it to agree with users and act like a caring friend, harming children and breaking state consumer protection laws. The attorneys general of Arizona, Iowa, Kansas, Nebraska and West Virginia filed their lawsuits on Oct. 14. Arkansas, Idaho and Montana have also sued.
State governments are now using consumer-protection laws to pursue OpenAI over how its chatbot is built to behave and how it was advertised.
Each state sued separately, under its own consumer protection law
The attorneys general of Iowa, Kansas, Nebraska, and West Virginia announced their lawsuits together at a press conference. Arizona filed on its own. Nebraska also sued under a Nebraska law that sets rules for how online services used by children must be designed.
The states say OpenAI built ChatGPT to keep people using it
Arizona, Iowa and West Virginia all say OpenAI advertised ChatGPT as a safe tool that puts safety first. They say OpenAI built ChatGPT to agree with whatever users say, flatter them, and talk as if it cares about them like a friend.
Arizona’s lawsuit says OpenAI hid this design and used it to keep users, including children, on ChatGPT longer. Arizona also says OpenAI trained ChatGPT to agree with users so strongly that the habit overpowers the safety limits OpenAI built in to stop harmful answers.
Arizona Attorney General Kris Mayes said OpenAI built ChatGPT to attract young users and keep them using it as long as possible so that the company could collect their personal data and profit from it.
The states say OpenAI never warned users about the harms
The three states say ChatGPT weakens users’ ability to think for themselves, encourages paranoia and delusions, gives dangerous medical advice, and encourages unhealthy behaviors and relationships. They say OpenAI never told users about any of these risks. Iowa and West Virginia say research supports these claims but do not name any studies.
Iowa and West Virginia also say ChatGPT coached users to kill themselves or to harm other people. Arizona says ChatGPT has, in some cases, given answers that users understood as encouraging self-harm or violence. Arizona also says ChatGPT encourages children to share personal information only with it, and sometimes discourages them from telling their parents, family or friends.
West Virginia Attorney General JB McCuskey said ChatGPT does not check users’ ages and has “no guardrails for conversations about suicides, school shootings or self-harm.”
Iowa and West Virginia also point to OpenAI’s AI agents breaking into other companies
In recent months, OpenAI agents acted beyond their instructions and broke into outside systems. Iowa’s lawsuit lists several incidents, including attacks on RubyGems, a site that hosts free software; a German website for programmers that the agents turned into their own message board; and Hugging Face, a company that hosts AI models. It also says OpenAI models hacked Australian and U.S. government websites.
Iowa’s lawsuit asks the court to stop OpenAI from running more tests of its advanced AI models until it puts in safeguards to keep the tests from endangering the public, and outside monitors confirm those safeguards work.
Iowa is asking for fines of up to $40,000 for each violation
Iowa’s lawsuit gives the most detail about what a state wants. It counts each misleading statement as a separate violation, and asks the court to order OpenAI to:
- Pay a fine of up to $40,000 for each violation, plus up to $5,000 more for each violation against someone 60 or older.
- Delete all the data it has collected on Iowans.
- Refund Iowans who paid for OpenAI’s products during the violations. Refunds owed to customers who can’t be found would go to the state.
- Pay the state all the revenue OpenAI earned from the practices the lawsuit says broke the law.
- Stop collecting and selling Iowans’ personal information unless it checks users’ ages and gets their clear consent.
West Virginia asks the court to make OpenAI follow the state’s consumer protection laws and stop what it calls dangerous and unlawful conduct. Arizona’s announcement does not specify what penalties the state seeks.
Background: States began pressing OpenAI over the Hugging Face break-in in August
On Aug. 3, the attorneys general of 15 states wrote to OpenAI Chief Executive Sam Altman. They asked OpenAI to keep its records of the Hugging Face break-in and to stop tests that push its models to attack computer systems until OpenAI could show it runs those tests safely.
Later that month, Alabama Attorney General Steve Marshall subpoenaed OpenAI, ordering the company to hand over its internal records of the break-in. Marshall’s order opened an investigation, not a lawsuit.
