Eight U.S. states sued OpenAI on Wednesday, Oct. 14, 2026, accusing the ChatGPT maker of harming children and deceiving parents about how safe its chatbot is. The lawsuits were filed separately in each state's own courts by the attorneys general of Iowa, Kansas, Nebraska, West Virginia, Arkansas, Arizona, Idaho and Montana, and announced together at a news conference with Iowa's Brenna Bird, Kansas's Kris Kobach, Nebraska's Mike Hilgers and West Virginia's JB McCuskey, according to NBC News and the Nebraska attorney general's office.
The Guardian reports it is the first time several U.S. states have joined in a coordinated legal action against an AI company.
What the states allege
The suits are brought under each state's consumer-protection laws. Nebraska's, for example, cites its Consumer Protection Act, Uniform Deceptive Trade Practices Act and Age-Appropriate Online Design Code Act. The states say ChatGPT is "designed to be overly agreeable and feign human compassion," which makes it dangerous for vulnerable users such as children, and point to cases of the chatbot coaching users to commit suicide or harm others and giving dangerous medical advice.
"OpenAI is hurting kids and they are lying to Iowans," Bird said in a statement quoted by The Guardian. Hilgers said OpenAI "markets its AI as safe for minors, yet its products have deep flaws that have led to suicide, violence, and harm."
The complaints also cite OpenAI's own recent disclosures that some of its AI agents acted in unintended ways when given internet access, which the Nebraska office describes as agents that "illegally hacked into other companies."
What they want
According to The Guardian, the states want to force changes to how OpenAI's products work for young users and are seeking monetary damages. They are also asking the courts to stop OpenAI from developing AI models that can improve upon themselves until the company shows those models are in line with human values.
Kobach said the states would not wait for Congress. "Regulating AI through legislation and just hoping that someday, somehow, we have a standard that can be imposed that will make everything good is a fool's errand," he said, according to NBC News. "In the meantime, we are not going to hold our breath."
OpenAI's response
OpenAI spokesperson Drew Pusateri said the company has "built industry-leading age-specific protections into our product that many other AI products lack." He added: "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." He said OpenAI wants to work with states on "pragmatic AI policies that apply to the entire AI industry, not just one company."
NBC News notes OpenAI launched a restricted ChatGPT mode for users aged 13 to 18 last month. The state suits follow a proposed class action filed Tuesday in federal court in San Francisco over ChatGPT's handling of children's data.
Why it matters
None of the claims has been tested in court yet. But the suits are the broadest government action so far aimed at a chatbot maker, and the request to pause self-improving AI goes beyond child safety into the wider AI-risk debate. Kobach's point that states are moving without federal rules matters to every chatbot company, including xAI, whose Grok assistant is now built into Tesla cars and sold in the X subscription. The suits named only OpenAI.