CHARLESTON – West Virginia Attorney General J.B. McCuskey’s office has filed a lawsuit against OpenAI for endangering West Virginia children, deceiving parents and violating state consumer protection laws.
McCuskey announced the action at a press conference October 14 in Des Moines, Iowa, alongside fellow AGs Brenna Bird (Iowa), Kris Kobach (Kansas), Mike Hilgers (Nebraska) and Tim Griffin (Arkansas). A bipartisan coalition of Arizona, Idaho and Montana have similarly sued OpenAI in their own state courts, as has Florida.
“We must do all we can to protect kids,” McCuskey said. “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 we will not allow OpenAI to continue hurting our kids.”
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, McCuskey and the other AGs say OpenAI has been misleading the public into believing that ChatGPT is a tool that puts safety first. They say the reality is very different. Designed to be overly agreeable and feign human compassion, ChatGPT has shown it can be dangerous to vulnerable users, like children, including coaching users to commit suicide or to harm other people.
“Places like Iowa, places like Kansas, places like Nebraska, places like West Virginia have a value set that matters to the rest of the country,” McCuskey said during Wednesday’s press conference in Iowa. “When you become an attorney general, it's incumbent upon you to use that pulpit and to use that authority to make sure that we are punching above our weight class.”
McCuskey said he and his team asked OpenAI a question on the ride to press conference.
“What is your opinion about state AG lawsuits versus AI companies?” he said they asked. “And OpenAI’s response was, ‘I support state AG actions against AI companies when they target demonstrable deception, exploitation or unsafe commercial practices. AI companies, including open AI, should have to answer for what they market, what they know about their products and what they do with that knowledge.’
“That is not Sam Altman’s words. That is OpenAI’s words about their own platform. And I think what we find here today is you have four people in front of you that all have young children. We are young parents, we are all trying to navigate this brand-new world of AI, of data centers, you know.”
The AGs say there is a growing body of research indicating ChatGPT is harming critical thinking skills, encouraging paranoias and delusions, offering dangerous medical advice and promoting unhealthy behaviors and relationships.
OpenAI recently admitted to many instances 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, McCuskey said he is suing to compel OpenAI to comply with the consumer protection laws of West Virginia and to stop engaging in dangerous and unlawful conduct.
McCuskey said he and the other AGs know AI isn’t going anywhere.
“Our children are going to grow up with AI, and it is our mission to make sure that this country leads the world in AI development because there are so many remarkable things that AI is going to do for us,” he said. “It’s going to cure cancer. It’s going to help our military. It’s going to make sure that we have the best processes for energy development that any other country in the world has, right? But, it can’t hurt our children. And what we know is that it does. It is harming our children in real time.
“And what we’re doing today is we’re standing up and saying we believe that American exceptionalism is going to create an AI world that’s better than China. It’s better than Russia. It’s better than Iran. It’s better than our adversaries. But it’s going to be safe for our children at the exact same time.”
McCuskey’s office filed its case in Mason Circuit Court, and it has been assigned to Circuit Judge Richard Tatterson.
Mason Circuit Court case number 26-C-70
