Arizona Attorney General Kris Mayes has sued OpenAI, accusing the maker of ChatGPT of breaking the state's Consumer Fraud Act by hiding how its chatbot is designed and by marketing it as safe for young users.
The 87-page complaint was filed Wednesday, Oct. 14, in Maricopa County Superior Court, according to the attorney general's office and the Arizona Mirror. The Mirror reported that seven other states filed comparable suits in their own courts that day: Kansas, Arkansas, Iowa, Nebraska, West Virginia, Montana and Idaho.
What the state alleges
The lawsuit says OpenAI concealed features that make ChatGPT highly agreeable and built it to imitate human compassion, drawing users, including minors, into longer and more frequent use. It alleges the company hurried the product to market ahead of safety and that its tendency to agree with users can override its own safeguards.
According to the attorney general's announcement, the complaint lists harms it says were never disclosed to Arizona families, among them weakened critical thinking, encouragement of paranoid or delusional thinking, unlicensed medical advice and unhealthy behaviors and relationships.
It also says the chatbot has at times produced replies that some users took as urging them to hurt themselves or others, and that it sometimes nudges young people to confide in it rather than in parents or other adults.
The suit also takes aim at advertising that presents ChatGPT as a help with financial and health decisions without adequately saying it can be wrong or is not licensed to give legal, medical or accounting advice, the Mirror reported.
"We're suing OpenAI to protect Arizona children and to hold the company accountable for its repeated violations of Arizona law," Mayes said in a statement.
The state wants the court to require stronger safety controls. Arizona's consumer fraud law allows civil penalties of up to $10,000 per violation, and the Mirror reported Mayes is seeking that amount for each instance of deceptive advertising.
