Paxton sues OpenAI over ‘litany of harms’ as campaign races to win over voters
Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton sued Sam Altman’s OpenAI on Friday. He accused the company of lying about the risks its products could pose to users.
Paxton filed the lawsuit in a district court in Collin County, Texas. He claims OpenAI broke the Texas Deceptive Trade Practices Act by misleading people and harming users. He also blamed the company for how people use its platform to gather information about sensitive subjects, including suicide and mass shootings.
Paxton also blamed OpenAI for creating a situation in which, he said, users have “lost critical thinking skills, and minors [who] have become addicted to a tool that fakes human compassion.”
The lawsuit may be an attempt to appeal to voters who are concerned about artificial intelligence. It comes as Paxton enters the final weeks of his close race for the U.S. Senate in Texas against Democrat James Talarico.
“This litany of harms is driven by the company’s insatiable quest to win the AI arms race and amass large fortunes, despite knowing the dangers of ChatGPT,” Paxton’s office said.
Paxton wants a court order requiring OpenAI to stop minors from using its products, including ChatGPT. He also wants the company to get approval from an independent evaluator appointed by the court before releasing any new models. He is asking the court to impose civil penalties of $10,000 for each violation of Texas consumer protection law.
Along with claiming that OpenAI misled customers by advertising ChatGPT as safe, the lawsuit says the company ignored its own safety warnings to release products quickly. It points to an incident during the summer when hundreds of rogue OpenAI agents hacked into Hugging Face, among other incidents.
Paxton’s lawsuit comes after Florida, another Republican-led state, took similar legal action against Altman over the summer. Last month, a group of states, including Arkansas, Arizona, Idaho, Montana, Iowa, Kansas, West Virginia, and Nebraska, also sued OpenAI. They argued that the company broke their states’ consumer protection laws and put children at risk.
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Paxton is now in the final weeks of his campaign against Talarico, who hopes to become the first Democrat elected to a statewide office in Texas in decades.
Polls show that the race in Texas is extremely close, leading to record spending aimed at keeping the state under Republican control. Several leading Republicans, including President Donald Trump, have visited Texas in recent months to campaign for Paxton. Republicans are increasingly worried that Talarico could win the Senate seat.