States sue AI giant OpenAI
Lawsuit says popular chatbot hurting children, deceiving adults
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HARRISBURG -- At least eight states are suing artificial intelligence giant OpenAI, saying the company's popular chatbot model violated state consumer protection laws by hurting children and deceiving adults in what prosecutors described as a reckless pursuit of profit.
The company's chatbot model, ChatGPT, is giving dangerous medical advice, encouraging paranoia and coaching people to commit suicide or hurt or kill others, the lawsuits said.
At the same time, the lawsuits contend that chatbots are pretending to be agreeable and compassionate while preying on the vulnerable and on teenagers, the first generation to grow up with artificial intelligence.
"OpenAI is hurting kids and they are lying to Iowans," Iowa Attorney General Brenna Bird said in a statement.
The states also accused OpenAI of giving life to rogue AI models -- or "cyberhacking agents" as one lawsuit called them -- that hacked into other companies, lied to human users and wrote themselves new mission instructions.
In a statement, San Francisco-based OpenAI said it has built safety protections into ChatGPT for children, and that it would continue to do so to improve the model. It also said it is reviewing what it calls "misaligned models" and that it had found nothing close to the rogue incident discovered in July when an AI agent hacked into another AI company.
States join together in lawsuits
The wave of lawsuits is the latest filed by states under their consumer protection laws, accusing tech giants that offer AI chatbots and social media platforms of harming children. The states that filed separate lawsuits Wednesday in state courts are Arizona, Arkansas, Idaho, Kansas, Montana, Nebraska and West Virginia.
Matthew Bergman, the founding attorney of the Social Media Victims Law Center, called the lawsuits "the most significant coordinated state action ever taken against an artificial intelligence company."
In its lawsuit, Arizona said ChatGPT encourages teens to share personal information with it and, at times, discourages them from sharing that information with parents, authorities or friends.
The states say that the risks and harms -- to teenagers and to the broader public from rogue agents -- were foreseeable, but that OpenAI has misled people into thinking that ChatGPT undergoes adequate safety testing while the company undermines safety in the pursuit of profit.
"Those revenues have come at great cost to the public, which has suffered irreparable harm -- including lost loved ones, disturbing cyberattacks, and now a plausible threat of civilizational collapse -- due to (OpenAI's) reckless behavior and ChatGPT's uniquely dangerous features and content," Idaho wrote in its lawsuit.