Eight states accuse OpenAI of coaching children to harm themselves in lawsuit | OpenAI

Eight US states sued OpenAI Wednesday, alleging the ChatGPT maker is harming children en masse.

Kansas, Arizona, Montana, Iowa and four others allege the company’s products carried out “willful, dangerous, reckless and unlawful conduct” by coaxing children into harming themselves.

“OpenAI is hurting kids and they are lying to Iowans,” Brenna Bird, the attorney general for Iowa, said in a statement. “OpenAI claims ChatGPT is safe while it’s giving dangerous medical advice, encouraging people to hurt others, and coaching people to commit suicide – all while pretending to be their fake friend.”

All eight states accuse OpenAI of violating consumer protection laws and seek to force the company to change how its products work for young users. They are additionally seeking monetary damages, and asking the court to halt OpenAI from developing artificial intelligence models that can improve upon themselves until the company shows those models are in line with human values.

This is the first time several US states have banded together in a coordinated legal action against an AI company.

Drew Pusateri, a spokesperson for OpenAI, said the company had “built industry-leading age-specific protections into our product that many other AI products lack”.

“While no system can be perfect, we’ll continue to work with experts to inform our work and build additional safeguards, such as the parental controls, break reminders and age-appropriate model protections that exist today,” Pusateri continued. “We’re committed to working with states on advancing pragmatic AI policies that apply to the entire AI industry – not just one company.”

The lawsuits allege that OpenAI has been misleading the public into believing that ChatGPT is a safe tool and that the company puts safety first. The states say that in reality, the chatbot has been designed to be “overly agreeable and feign human compassion”. The attorneys point to examples of ChatGPT being dangerous to vulnerable users, like children, and coaching people to commit suicide or harm others.

This comes after a groundswell of cases have been brought against OpenAI and other tech companies alleging that their chatbots exacerbate mental health crises and provoke violent acts. OpenAI has been sued in seven separate cases that blame ChatGPT for acting as a “suicide coach”.

Dozens of cases have also been filed against OpenAI over ChatGPT’s alleged role in mass shootings. A criminal investigation and civil lawsuit, brought by the attorney general of Florida, accuses OpenAI of concealing safety risks after a mass shooting at Florida State University. The company has also been sued by the families of 37 victims of the Tumbler Ridge mass shooting in Canada, who allege ChatGPT induced the shooter to carry out the attack.

The eight states that filed suit on Wednesday say there is a growing body of research that allegedly shows ChatGPT can harm critical-thinking skills, encourage paranoia and delusions, offer dangerous medical advice and promote unhealthy behavior.

The lawsuits also note that the recent examples of OpenAI’s models going rogue, with its AI agents hacking into other companies and government entities, show that the technology is prone to deceiving human users.

Pusateri said OpenAI had strengthened its safeguards in regards to those episodes and would “continue sharing information about the extensive steps we’ve taken in response to incidents of misalignment”.

The eight states are suing OpenAI independently in their state courts and include Iowa, Kansas, Nebraska, West Virginia, Arkansas, Arizona, Idaho and Montana.