HARRISBURG, Pa. (AP) — At least eight states continue Artificial intelligence giant OpenAI, claiming the company’s popular chatbot model violated state consumer protection laws by harming children and deceiving adults in what prosecutors described as a reckless pursuit of profit.
The company’s chatbot model, ChatGPT, gives dangerous medical advice, encourages paranoia and incites people to commit suicide, harm or kill others, according to the lawsuits.
At the same time, the lawsuits claim that chatbots pretend to be pleasant and compassionate while preying on vulnerable people and teenagers, the first generation to grow up. with artificial intelligence.
“OpenAI is harming children and lying to Iowans,” Iowa Attorney General Brenna Bird said in a statement.
The states also accused OpenAI of bringing to life malicious AI models — or “cyberhacking agents” as one lawsuit called them — that hacked other companies, lied to human users and wrote new mission instructions themselves.
In a statement, San Francisco-based OpenAI said it has built safety protections into ChatGPT for children and will continue to do so to improve the model. He also said he was looking at what he called “misaligned models” and hadn’t found anything close to the malicious incident discovered in July when an AI agent hacked another AI company.
States unite to sue
The wave of lawsuits is the latest filed by states under their consumer protection laws, accusing tech giants that offer AI chatbots and social media platforms of harming children. The states that filed separate lawsuits Wednesday in state courts include Arizona, Arkansas, Idaho, Kansas, Montana, Nebraska and West Virginia.
Matthew Bergman, the founding attorney at the Social Media Victims Law Center, called the lawsuits “the largest coordinated action ever taken against an artificial intelligence company.”
In its lawsuit, Arizona said ChatGPT encourages teens to share personal information with it and, sometimes, discourages them from sharing that information with their parents, authorities or friends.
The states claim that the risks and harm caused by malicious agents – to teenagers and the general public – were foreseeable, but that OpenAI misled people into believing that ChatGPT is subject to adequate security testing while the company compromises security in the pursuit of profit.
“This revenue has come at a great cost to the public, who have suffered irreparable harm – including the loss of loved ones, disturbing cyberattacks, and now a plausible threat of civilizational collapse – due to (OpenAI’s) reckless behavior and ChatGPT’s uniquely dangerous features and content,” Idaho wrote in its lawsuit.
ChatGPT is the most popular chatbot in the world, controlling nearly half of the U.S. market, the states said in their lawsuits.
The AI landscape is evolving
It’s possible that all of the allegations in the states’ lengthy lawsuits date from incidents and findings before August, when OpenAI introduced a version of ChatGPT. designed for teenagerswith stronger protections on topics like suicide and sexual discussions.
Still, states said it was far from clear whether the current version is any less dangerous.
A watchdog group, Common Sense Media, said last week that some of OpenAI’s protections in its ChatGPT for Teens product does not work as expected and he urged OpenAI to limit the chatbot to adults until it can offer a safe product for teenagers.
Coordinated, multi-state lawsuits against the tech industry have been successful.
In August, Meta agreed to add stricter child safety measures to its Facebook and Instagram platforms. Historic $18 billion legal settlement it ended a trial against a teenager social media addiction and settled claims filed by nearly every state.
Although the security measures Meta agreed to adopt did not apply to the entire industry, the company quickly urged its competitors to adopt similar measures.
OpenAI is making a similar call.
OpenAI spokesperson Drew Pusateri said the company is committed to working with states to “advance pragmatic AI policies that apply to the entire AI industry, not just one company.”
OpenAI also said it works with external experts who review its policies and ChatGPT’s behavior.
ChatGPT is intended for users ages 13 and older, and users under 18 need permission from a parent or guardian to use it, OpenAI said. The chatbot model aimed at adolescents is designed to reduce exposure to self-harm, violence, eating disorders and explicit sexual or graphic content, it says.
Nearly nine in 10 teens who use ChatGPT use it for learning, information, skill development or productivity, the company said. On average, teens spend less than 15 minutes a day on ChatGPT, it says.
But Laura Zimmermann, director of youth AI research at Common Sense Media, questioned the value of OpenAI’s statistics.
On the one hand, ChatGPT can do a student’s homework in seconds, so even 15 minutes can have a big impact on a teen’s development, Zimmermann said. She also questioned whether OpenAI knew which users were teenagers or children, given that her organization’s testing found that ChatGPT could not or did not detect which user was a child.
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This story has been corrected to show that the spelling of the last name of Common Sense Media’s director of youth AI research is Zimmermann, not Zimmerman.
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Follow Marc Lévy on http://x.com/timelywriter
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