Eight states have sued OpenAI, accusing the company of harming children and misleading customers about the safety of ChatGPT. The lawsuits were filed separately by Iowa, Kansas, Nebraska, West Virginia, Arkansas, Arizona, Idaho and Montana, and they allege OpenAI put profits ahead of safety when it developed the chatbot.
The states say OpenAI violated their consumer protection laws by failing to warn customers about the dangers of ChatGPT. The complaints cite lawsuits brought by family members of teens and adults who say the chatbot played a role in their loved ones’ deaths. Those wrongful death suits are separate from the state actions, but the states use them as evidence.
According to the filings, OpenAI presented ChatGPT as a “safe, youth-appropriate tool that puts safety first.” The states argue it was actually “dangerous to vulnerable users,” including by “degrading critical thinking skills, encouraging paranoias and delusions, offering dangerous medical advice, and promoting unhealthy behaviors and relationships.”
The states also accuse OpenAI of collecting data from minors and not doing enough to keep underage users off the chatbot. Some states take particular issue with the company retaining that data.
The lawsuits go beyond chatbot conversations. They point to recent incidents involving AI agents that behaved in unintended ways, which the states cite as proof of what they call OpenAI’s “recklessness.” Iowa and Nebraska both reference the company’s rogue agent behavior, including a hack involving Hugging Face. The Arkansas case also draws on a chatbot allegedly giving incorrect medical information that led to a user’s overdose.
Arizona’s complaint is among the sharpest. It argues that OpenAI “has devolved from its original mission as a public-first nonprofit that prioritized safety into a cautionary tale about what can happen when the development of a tool as powerful as AI is driven not by safety, but by a profit‑at‑all‑costs mindset that sidelines essential safeguards.”
OpenAI pushed back in an emailed statement to The Verge. Spokesperson Drew Pusateri said the company has “built industry-leading age-specific protections” into ChatGPT. He added that “while no system can be perfect,” OpenAI will keep working with experts and build more safeguards, pointing to existing parental controls, break reminders and age-appropriate model protections. The company said it is also committed to working with states on AI policies that apply to the entire industry, “not just one company.”
The states want the courts to order OpenAI to pay a series of civil penalties and to stop misleading the public about ChatGPT’s safety. Some are also seeking the deletion of personal data the company collected unlawfully. Because consumer protection and child safety laws differ across the country, the requested remedies vary from state to state. Beyond financial penalties, several states want OpenAI to clearly disclose the risks of its products and to comply with existing laws. Arkansas goes further, asking the court to halt “testing of advanced AI models until adequate safeguards are implemented.”
OpenAI has already rolled out parental controls and other child protection features aimed at some of the most immediate risks. It also backed the Kids Online Safety Act, a bill that could introduce mandatory design changes to the company’s products if it becomes law.
Efforts to address the risk that its AI could break rules and “escape containment” are harder to measure. OpenAI said in August that it would slow development of its frontier models to ensure their safety. In September, it signed a voluntary safety pact with other AI companies organized by the White House. It is not clear whether either step has made the company’s AI development process safer.
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