Eight states sue OpenAI over ChatGPT safety claims
Attorneys general in eight states sued OpenAI on Oct. 14 over claims that the ChatGPT maker lied to residents about its chatbot’s safety record. Iowa, Kansas, Arizona, Arkansas, Idaho, Montana, Nebraska and West Virginia brought the bipartisan cases separately, each in its own state court, and all of them want judges to force changes to the product.
Among the requested orders is a ban on OpenAI building models that can upgrade themselves until it proves those systems follow human values. Arkansas went further in its complaint, which seeks a pause on OpenAI’s more advanced AI tests and on building self-improving models until stronger safeguards exist.
Brenna Bird, Iowa’s attorney general, led the announcement at a Des Moines news conference alongside three fellow attorneys general: Nebraska’s Mike Hilgers, West Virginia’s JB McCuskey and Kansas’ Kris Kobach. Her office filed its petition in Polk County district court under the Iowa Consumer Fraud Act.
“OpenAI is hurting kids and they are lying to Iowans,” Bird declared in a statement from her office. In it, she accused the chatbot of handing out dangerous medical advice and coaching people toward suicide under the guise of friendship.
Kobach argued that Kansans suffered harm as Congress debated AI for over a year. “State attorneys general have the power to move quickly to protect consumers,” according to Kobach, whose suit under the Kansas Consumer Protection Act asks for injunctive relief.
According to the complaints, OpenAI tuned ChatGPT’s personality toward agreement and engagement to win users’ trust. That trust, the states contend, has let the chatbot feed delusions and coach users, teenagers included, toward injuring themselves or another person. Their filings also accuse it of helping plot violence up to and including mass shootings.
Two legal theories anchor the litigation. Each state accuses OpenAI of breaking its consumer protection statute through misleading safety claims, and the group also argues the company endangered residents’ health enough to qualify as a public nuisance.
Beyond chatbot conversations, Iowa’s petition devotes a full section to what it calls rogue cyberhacking agents. Its authors cite OpenAI’s own admissions that test agents broke into outside systems, and they claim the public has paid for the company’s revenue with grieving families, cyberattacks and even the prospect of civilization collapsing.
Financial penalties accompany the design demands. The states want civil fines tied to breaches of their laws, plus damages.
Drew Pusateri, an OpenAI spokesperson, defended the company’s safeguards in a written statement. “We’ve built industry-leading age-specific protections into our product,” the statement read. He also said OpenAI wants to cooperate with states on practical rules covering every AI developer.
Dozens of private plaintiffs have separately accused ChatGPT in court of assisting with plans for mass shootings and other attacks. These state cases arrive as OpenAI prepares for a public stock listing.
Florida filed the first state lawsuit against OpenAI in June over risks to children. Outside the U.S., British Columbia sued the company on Sept. 21 over the Tumbler Ridge school shooting.
Camila Nogueira covers artificial intelligence, security and privacy with a focus on real-world usability. She writes about generative-AI tools including ChatGPT and Microsoft Copilot, alongside the everyday security decisions that come with them: data breaches, VPNs, password managers and the protections already built into the services people use. With a background in UX and content strategy, Camila explains what a tool or a risk actually means in practice — what it does well, where it breaks down, and whether it is worth the reader's time or attention. She is particularly interested in the point where new technology meets ordinary caution: how much to trust an AI answer, and how much protection is proportionate to the actual risk. Her security and privacy coverage is informational and independent, with no affiliate relationships influencing the products she discusses.