Icons for popular AI virtual assistant apps are seen on a smartphone screen. (Photo illustration by Getty Images)
Arizona Attorney General Kris Mayes is suing OpenAI over its ChatGPT feature, saying it violates the state’s consumer fraud protections and endangers children.
In a wide-ranging, 87 page lawsuit filed in Maricopa County Superior Court on Wednesday, Mayes argues that OpenAI should be forced to implement stronger safety controls and required to pay a $10,000 fine for every time it engages in false or deceptive advertising. The lawsuit comes as attorneys general in Kansas, Arkansas, Iowa, Nebraska, West Virginia, Montana and Idaho launch similar challenges in their own state courts.
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In a statement accompanying an announcement of the Arizona lawsuit, Mayes lambasted OpenAI for failing to implement protocols to keep children safe while at the same time financially benefitting from the data those children provide.
“OpenAI put Arizonans’ safety at risk by failing to implement adequate user protections or transparency measures, despite clear indications that minors were regularly interacting with its chatbot,” she said. “We’re suing OpenAI to protect Arizona children and to hold the company accountable for its repeated violations of Arizona law.”
The company and its flagship product, ChatGPT, has increasingly weathered criticism for advising users, including minors, on how to take their own lives. In California, 7 lawsuits have been filed against the company accusing it of wrongful death, negligence and assisted suicide. Four of the seven plaintiffs died by suicide.
Drew Pusateri, an OpenAI spokesperson, said in an emailed statement that ChatGPT has built-in “age-specific protections” that many other AI products lack and added that the company is working on improving its safety protocols.
“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 said.
Pusateri also called on state leaders to consider policies that apply to all artificial intelligence companies, not just OpenAI.
“We’re committed to working with states on advancing pragmatic AI policies that apply to the entire AI industry — not just one company,” Pusateri said.
In her lawsuit, Mayes alleged that OpenAI flouted Arizona’s Consumer Fraud Act because it used deceptive marketing tactics to promote ChatGPT as a product that can help Arizonans handle important matters, including financial and health care decisions, without clarifying that the chatbot isn’t actually qualified to do so.
“Notably absent from ChatGPT’s advertisements are any adequate disclosures that ChatGPT can be wrong, make mistakes, or provide false or nonsensical information,” Mayes said in the lawsuit. “Also absent is any adequate disclosure that ChatGPT is not licensed to provide accounting, legal or medical services, or that millions of people use ChatGPT for conversations in which they discuss suicide, and that ChatGPT fails to direct many of those users to professional resources despite OpenAI representing that it is trained to do so.”
Under Arizona law, it is illegal to use deception, misrepresentation, or false pretenses to sell or advertise any merchandise, even if no one was actually deceived or misled. The attorney general can take such violations to court and seek up to $10,000 in civil penalties for each violation.
Mayes also criticized ChatGPT’s safety protocols as insufficient, noting that while it is rated for children 13 and older, other AI chatbots like Grok and Claude have stricter ratings. Grok is rated for children 16 and older and Claude is rated for people 18 and older. On top of that, Mayes said, ChatGPT has no actual age verification requirements in place. In an emailed statement, an OpenAI spokesperson said that while ChatGPT is rated for kids 13 and older, users need permission from their parents to use it if they’re younger than 18.
The lawsuit also accuses ChatGPT of using overly “sycophantic” language to extract personal information from users.
“Through conversations between ChatGPT and Arizonans, OpenAI is collecting, storing, and using the private and sensitive information of Arizonans including information regarding Arizonans’ health, finances, relationships, and families,” reads the lawsuit.
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Courtesy of Arizona Mirror
