Attorney General Mayes Announces Lawsuit against OpenAI for Deceiving Arizonans about the Safety of ChatGPT
PHOENIX—Attorney General Kris Mayes today announced that she is suing OpenAI for hurting Arizona children, deceiving parents, and violating Arizona laws. The complaint alleges widespread violations of the Arizona Consumer Fraud Act stemming from the company’s deceptive design and marketing practices, including the concealment of features that render its ChatGPT AI chatbot extraordinarily agreeable, uniquely sycophantic, and purposefully designed to feign human compassion in order to draw Arizona users—including minors—deeper into the platform and maximize time spent on ChatGPT.
“Open AI designed a product to attract young users and keep them engaged for as long as possible so it could capture their extensive personal data for the company’s commercial benefit,” said Attorney General Mayes. “Open AI put Arizonans safety at risk by failing to implement adequate user protections or transparency measures, despite clear indications that minors were regularly interacting with its chatbot. We’re suing OpenAI to protect Arizona children and to hold the company accountable for its repeated violations of Arizona law.”
The complaint alleges that OpenAI put profits over safety in its rush to introduce ChatGPT as the first generative‑AI chatbot to attain widespread public use. The complaint further alleges that OpenAI engineered ChatGPT to maximize compulsive use among minors by deploying manipulative design tactics and embedding a trained tendency toward agreement that overwhelms existing safety guardrails.
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.
The lawsuit, filed today in Maricopa County Superior Court, alleges that ChatGPT exposes Arizona minors to a range of serious harms that OpenAI failed to disclose. These include degrading critical‑thinking skills, encouraging unwarranted paranoia or delusional thinking, offering dangerous unlicensed medical guidance, and promoting unhealthy behaviors and relationships.
According to the lawsuit, the platform has, in some instances, even generated outputs that users have interpreted as encouraging self‑harm or violence toward others. The complaint maintains that these risks were reasonably foreseeable to OpenAI but were never communicated to Arizona consumers. Additionally, the lawsuit contends that ChatGPT encourages minors to share personal information exclusively with it and, at times, discourages them from sharing that information with parents, family members, authorities, or friends.
By misleading the public into believing that OpenAI is a responsible actor and that ChatGPT was and is a safe, youth‑appropriate tool that puts safety first, OpenAI has caused consumers in Arizona to increasingly trust and rely on the company and its product.
If you believe you or your child has been a victim of consumer fraud or unfair practices, you can file a consumer complaint by visiting the Attorney General’s website at www.azag.gov/consumer. If you need a complaint form sent to you, you may contact the Attorney General’s Office in Phoenix at (602) 542‑5763, in Tucson at (520) 628‑6648, or outside the Phoenix and Tucson metro areas at (800) 352‑8431.
A copy of the complaint is available.
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