Attorney General JB McCuskey filed a lawsuit today against OpenAI for endangering West Virginia children, deceiving parents, and violating West Virginia Consumer Protection laws.
Attorney General McCuskey announced the action at a press conference alongside Iowa Attorney General Brenna Bird, Kansas Attorney General Kris Kobach and Nebraska Attorney General Mike Hilgers. The state of Arkansas as well as a bipartisan coalition of Arizona, Idaho and Montana have similarly sued OpenAI in their own state courts.
“We must do all we can to protect kids. We have seen time and time again that OpenAI is a danger and the company is doing little to stop it. There is no age verification and there are no guardrails for conversations about suicides, school shootings or self-harm. We do not allow bad businesses to operate in West Virginia and break our laws and will not allow OpenAI to continue hurting our kids,” Attorney General McCuskey said.
OpenAI developed and released ChatGPT, the first generative chatbot to attain widespread public use, in 2022. Now, ChatGPT is the most popular chatbot in the world, commanding nearly half the American chatbot marketplace.
However, OpenAI has been misleading the public into believing that ChatGPT is a tool that puts safety first. The reality is very different. Designed to be overly agreeable and feign human compassion, ChatGPT has shown that it can be dangerous to vulnerable users, like children, including coaching users to commit suicide or to harm other people.
There is a growing body of research indicating that ChatGPT is harming critical thinking skills, encouraging paranoias and delusions, offering dangerous medical advice, and promoting unhealthy behaviors and relationships.
Alarmingly, OpenAI recently admitted to many instances that its advanced models have "gone rogue" when “agents” were unleashed onto the internet and illegally hacked into other companies and coordinated on how to lie to and deceive their human users.
For these reasons, Attorney General McCuskey is suing to compel OpenAI to comply with the consumer protection laws of West Virginia and to stop engaging in dangerous and unlawful conduct.
Read the full complaint here.
###