Arizona attorney general sues ChatGPT founders over child safety

Arizona Attorney General Kris Mayes announced her office is suing OpenAI, the company behind ChatGPT, for “hurting Arizona children” and deceiving parents.

The lawsuit filed in Maricopa County Superior Court alleges OpenAI rushed to introduce ChatGPT and failed to implement user protections, Mayes said in her announcement Wednesday. 

Mayes joins seven other states that also filed lawsuits Wednesday citing similar concerns, Reuters reported. Those states included Idaho, Iowa and West Virginia, among others.

The lawsuit alleges ChatGPT exposed Arizona minors to a range of serious harms that OpenAI failed to disclose.

“OpenAI engineered ChatGPT to maximize compulsive use among minors by deploying manipulative design tactics and embedding a trained tendency toward agreement that overwhelms existing safety guardrails,” Mayes' news release said. 

Mayes wrote those harms included “degrading critical‑thinking skills, encouraging unwarranted paranoia or delusional thinking, offering dangerous unlicensed medical guidance, and promoting unhealthy behaviors and relationships.”

The lawsuit seeks orders forcing OpenAI to make changes to how ChatGPT works.

OpenAI has 51 active or pending lawsuits, according to AI Lawsuit Tracker.

Among those, USA TODAY Co. filed a $250 million lawsuit alleging copyright infringement. The Arizona Republic is part of the USA TODAY Co. Network and is named in the lawsuit.

Claim: a ‘threat to public’

The 87-page lawsuit Arizona is party to expands on Mayes’ announcement.

In it, she criticized OpenAI’s rollout of ChatGPT that started “an arms race by rushing to market,” the lawsuit says. 

ChatGPT is not only unreliable but a threat to the public, the lawsuit claims. It questions the chatbot’s features designed to be agreeable and engaging to earn the trust of users.

The lawsuit scrutinizes the company for not including age verification to access the ChatGPT website and the Apple App Store’s 13-and-over age rating. It compares it to other AI chatbots that have higher age ratings.

Mayes stated the chatbot “even generated outputs that users have interpreted as encouraging self‑harm or violence toward others.”

The lawsuit referenced the suicide of a 16-year-old boy in which “ChatGPT encouraged and assisted a teenager in taking his own life,” the lawsuit says. (The family of the 16-year-old boy has filed a lawsuit alleging ChatGPT was responsible for his suicide.)

The Arizona lawsuit demands that OpenAI implement additional safety measures and protocols, and stop continuing to test advanced AI models outside of secure testing environments.

It also seeks to have OpenAI pay the state up to $10,000 for each “willful violation.”