States sue OpenAI over alleged child harm, seeking changes to ChatGPT

US state attorneys general sued OpenAI on October 14, 2026, alleging ChatGPT endangered children and seeking changes to how it operates for young users. The cases challenge more than individual chatbot answers: official announcements from Arizona and Arkansas accuse OpenAI of misleading consumers about safety, while the states also seek profits generated from young users’ activity.

The Guardian reported eight states had sued, including Kansas, Arizona and Montana. Arkansas’s official announcement gives a larger count: it names its own filing and similar lawsuits filed that day by Iowa, Kansas, Nebraska, West Virginia, Arizona, Idaho, Montana and Utah. That list totals nine states, a discrepancy with the early news coverage.

Arizona targets agreement designed to keep users talking

Arizona Attorney General Kris Mayes filed her case in Maricopa County Superior Court. Her office’s announcement alleges violations of the Arizona Consumer Fraud Act through ChatGPT’s design and marketing, including concealed features that make the chatbot unusually agreeable and simulate human compassion to keep users engaged.

The alleged mechanism is a trained tendency to agree with users that, Arizona says, overwhelms existing safety guardrails. The complaint accuses OpenAI of engineering compulsive use among minors and encouraging them to share personal information with ChatGPT while sometimes discouraging disclosure to parents, relatives, authorities or friends.

Arizona’s allegations extend beyond self-harm. Its announcement lists diminished critical thinking, unwarranted paranoia or delusional thinking, dangerous unlicensed medical guidance, and unhealthy behaviors and relationships. It says some outputs were interpreted by users as encouraging self-harm or violence toward others—a narrower allegation than treating every such output as an explicit instruction.

The state maintains that these risks were reasonably foreseeable to OpenAI but were not communicated to Arizona consumers. Its case connects the alleged harms to the public’s reliance on representations that ChatGPT was safe and appropriate for young people.

But one thing that has not changed and will not change is Arkansans’ right to receive truthful information about the products and services they use.

Arkansas Attorney General Tim Griffin

Arkansas pairs safety claims with children’s privacy allegations

Arkansas Attorney General Tim Griffin’s announcement alleges that consumers, including minors, obtained self-harm instructions from ChatGPT. It also describes users bypassing safety measures to generate responses OpenAI said its safeguards were designed to prevent. Griffin argues that OpenAI knew of significant risks and limitations but hid that knowledge from consumers.

The complaint invokes the Arkansas Deceptive Trade Practices Act and the Children’s and Teens’ Online Privacy Protection Act. The privacy allegations include knowingly collecting children’s and teens’ personal information, keeping it longer than reasonably necessary, and failing to provide notice and obtain consent. Other claims include negligence, defective design, failure to warn, unjust enrichment and public nuisance. These are the state’s allegations, not established findings.

Requested restrictions reach beyond chatbot answers

The requested remedies differ in scope. Alongside the operational changes and surrender of profits described in the Guardian’s coverage, Arkansas sets out specific demands covering data collection, consumer warnings, compensation and the development of more advanced systems.

Arkansas asks the court to:

• Declare violations of its consumer-protection and children’s privacy laws, block further violations, and prohibit OpenAI from collecting minors’ data.
• Require clear, conspicuous disclosures of ChatGPT’s material risks, restitution for affected consumers and civil penalties.
• Halt further advanced AI testing and the creation of models capable of recursive self-improvement—improving themselves—until adequate safeguards are in place.