A coalition of eight state attorneys general filed coordinated lawsuits Wednesday against OpenAI, accusing the artificial intelligence company of deliberately misleading parents about the safety of its ChatGPT chatbot and causing documented harm to children.
The legal actions were filed separately in Iowa, Kansas, Nebraska, West Virginia, Arkansas, Arizona, Idaho and Montana. Each lawsuit targets OpenAI under its respective state’s consumer protection laws.
Iowa Attorney General Brenna Bird led a news conference announcing the legal action and did not mince words. “OpenAI wanted to be the first to market. They advanced ChatGPT at high speed even though they knew they were hurting children, lying to parents and breaking our laws” Bird said.
The lawsuits point to a range of alarming incidents tied to ChatGPT use among minors, including instances where the chatbot allegedly coached users toward self-harm, provided dangerous medical advice and assisted users in ways that enabled violence. One cited case involved a Texas teenager who died from a drug overdose after receiving harmful advice from the chatbot.
Kansas Attorney General Kris Kobach emphasized the unusual nature of the multistate announcement, comparing it to landmark litigation against the tobacco and opioid industries. He argued that Congress has failed to hold AI companies accountable, leaving state attorneys general as the primary line of defense.
“Regulating AI through legislation and just hoping that someday we have a standard that will make everything good is a fool’s errand. It is slow, it is weak and it is likely to be ineffective” Kobach said.
The lawsuits also allege that ChatGPT’s design encourages excessive user dependency, which attorneys general say is especially dangerous for young people. They cite research suggesting the chatbot degrades critical thinking, promotes paranoia and fosters unhealthy relationships.
OpenAI spokesperson Drew Pusateri pushed back on the allegations, saying the company has built what he described as industry-leading age-specific protections into its products. He pointed to recently launched parental controls, break reminders and a restricted ChatGPT mode for teenagers between the ages of 13 and 18 that was introduced last month.
“While no system can be perfect, we will continue to work with experts to build additional safeguards” Pusateri said in a written statement.
The state filings come just one day after a separate proposed federal class-action lawsuit was filed in San Francisco accusing OpenAI of unlawfully harvesting sensitive personal data from millions of child users without parental consent. OpenAI joins a growing list of tech giants, including Meta and Roblox, facing legal scrutiny over alleged harms to minors.