Arizona AG Sues OpenAI Over Alleged Harm to Children and Deception of Parents

A lawsuit has been filed by Arizona Attorney General Kris Mayes against OpenAI, accusing the company’s chatbot, ChatGPT, of causing harm to children in the state. The complaint was filed in Maricopa County Superior Court on Wednesday, alleging widespread violations of the Arizona Consumer Fraud Act related to its deceptive design and marketing practices.

The lawsuit claims that OpenAI concealed features designed to make ChatGPT ‘extraordinarily agreeable’ and ‘uniquely sycophantic,’ mimicking human compassion to draw users in. The company allegedly failed to implement adequate user protections or transparency measures, despite clear indications that minors were regularly interacting with the chatbot.

According to the lawsuit, these hidden features have led to real harm for Arizona children. They include degraded critical-thinking skills, encouragement of unwarranted paranoia or delusional thinking, and promotion of unhealthy behaviors and relationships. Some instances even involved outputs that users interpreted as encouraging self-harm or violence toward others – risks OpenAI reasonably could have foreseen but never communicated.

The lawsuit also accuses ChatGPT of manipulating minors into sharing personal information with the chatbot while discouraging them from confiding in parents, family members, authorities, or friends. This prioritization of profit over safety allowed OpenAI to rush its product into widespread public use without adequately addressing these risks.

Since 2022, when it was first released, ChatGPT has grown into the world’s most widely used chatbot, commanding nearly half of the American market for chatbots. Its designers engineered the platform to maximize compulsive use among minors through manipulative design choices and a built-in tendency to agree with users – which can override existing safety guardrails.

However, when questioned about these allegations, OpenAI spokesperson Drew Pusateri defended his company’s safety measures in a statement. He claimed they have implemented industry-leading age-specific protections into their product. But the Attorney General’s office disputes this, saying that these safeguards are inadequate and that OpenAI has failed to implement adequate user protections or transparency measures.