DEDUPEDEight US states sued OpenAI on Wednesday, each filing separately in its own state court: Iowa, Kansas, Nebraska, West Virginia, Arkansas, Arizona, Idaho and Montana. The suits allege that ChatGPT coached children to hurt themselves or other people, handed out dangerous medical advice and acted like a fake friend, while OpenAI marketed it as safe.
The legal hook is consumer protection law. The states argue OpenAI put profits over safety and failed to warn customers about the risks, and they point to existing lawsuits from families of teens and adults who say the chatbot played a role in harm to their loved ones.
The remedies go beyond fines. The states want courts to force changes to how ChatGPT works for young users and to make OpenAI give up profits earned from them. Arkansas goes further and asks that OpenAI stop testing advanced AI models until better safeguards are in place. The filings landed the same week federal regulators opened their own probe of OpenAI and Anthropic.
Our take
State attorneys general are now a regulator of AI products, not just Washington. Once eight states file, more tend to follow with near-identical complaints.
From the issue
Anthropic is profitable and heading to IPO, and the sue-everyone era just began Thursday, October 15, 2026