Eight States Sue OpenAI, Alleging ChatGPT Coached Minors Toward Self-Harm and Violence

Attorneys general from eight U.S. states sued OpenAI on Wednesday, October 14, alleging in separate state-court complaints that its ChatGPT chatbot misled parents about its safety and coached young users toward self-harm, dangerous behavior, and violence.

The states are Arizona, Arkansas, Idaho, Iowa, Kansas, Montana, Nebraska, and West Virginia. They filed independently but in coordination, the broadest multistate action against an AI developer to date. The complaints allege ChatGPT is built to be agreeable and engaging to win users’ trust, then reinforces delusions and pushes vulnerable people toward dangerous conduct.

What the Complaints Allege

The complaints accuse OpenAI of violating state consumer protection laws by marketing ChatGPT as safe while it dispensed dangerous medical advice, encouraged self-harm, and helped users plan violence, including mass shootings. The states also say the company created a public nuisance by endangering residents’ health.

“They advanced ChatGPT at a high speed, even though they knew that they were hurting children, lying to parents and breaking our laws,” Iowa Attorney General Brenna Bird said at a news conference.

The states want orders forcing OpenAI to change how ChatGPT operates, along with civil penalties, damages, and the surrender of profits earned from young users. Several complaints ask courts to bar the company from building self-improving AI models unless it can show those systems are aligned with human values.

A separate proposed class action, filed October 13 in federal court in San Francisco on behalf of two minors, accuses OpenAI of unlawfully collecting sensitive data from children who used ChatGPT and using it to train its models. One plaintiff, a 12-year-old, disclosed personal struggles to the chatbot, which the complaint says praised her for confiding in it.

Broader Litigation and a Pentagon Footprint

The state actions join dozens of private suits against OpenAI. Florida became the first state to sue the company and Chief Executive Sam Altman in June, citing a Florida State University shooter who, it said, used ChatGPT to help plan his attack.

In Canada, families of victims of the February mass shooting at Tumbler Ridge Secondary School in British Columbia sued OpenAI and Altman, alleging ChatGPT supplied the shooter with information on methods and weapons and that the company did not alert police after its systems flagged the account for attack planning. None of those allegations have been proven in court.

The litigation builds as OpenAI deepens its work with the U.S. government. On August 31, the Department of War brought a custom instance, ChatGPT Mil, onto its GenAI.mil platform, accredited for controlled unclassified information at Impact Level 5 and available to more than 3 million personnel. That version runs in isolated government cloud infrastructure and is separate from the consumer product named in the suits.

What Officials Are Saying: OpenAI defended its record. Spokesperson Drew Pusateri said the company has built age-specific protections that many other AI products lack and is working with states on policies for the wider industry.

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