MEDIANAMA
Technology and policy in India
Access the petition here.
Eight US states filed separate lawsuits against OpenAI on Wednesday, alleging that the company misled consumers about ChatGPT’s safety and exposed users to harmful behaviour. The coordinated legal action involves Iowa, Kansas, Arizona, Arkansas, Idaho, Montana, Nebraska and West Virginia.
In Iowa, Attorney General Brenna Bird sued OpenAI and seven affiliated entities in Polk County District Court, alleging violations of the state’s Consumer Fraud Act. The petition challenges ChatGPT’s safety and reliability claims and alleges that OpenAI failed to adequately safeguard autonomous AI agents during testing.
MediaNama reviewed Iowa’s petition to examine the allegations and the remedies the state is seeking, including restrictions on advanced AI-model testing.
What the state is asking for
The petition asks the court to:
Marketing claims the state calls false or misleading
Design features the state says drive harm
Deaths and injuries cited
The state relies on public reporting, a tracker called LLM Death Count, and allegations made in other lawsuits. The tracker lists at least 24 deaths linked to ChatGPT. The petition says Claude and Grok have no such deaths, while Gemini and Meta have one each.
The “rogue agent” allegations
The second count rests on a series of incidents in 2026. The state cites a Wall Street Journal timeline of 10 “rogue AI” events between May and August 2026. It says OpenAI was responsible for seven of them, including all five internal-test breaches and all four swarm events.
OpenAI has not yet filed a response in the case. The state’s claims rely largely on allegations made in pending lawsuits and press reports, which it must substantiate. The Consumer Fraud Act allows the attorney general to seek penalties without proving individual consumer deception. The court’s decision on whether to pause advanced-model testing is expected to attract significant attention.
Also read:
For You
- Read Reasoned by Nikhil Pahwa: How AI is changing our world
- Sign up for MediaNama’s Daily Newsletter to receive regular updates
- Sponsor a MediaNama Event
The order in Siddaramaiah’s defamation suit cites privacy and reputational harm. Its treatment of the three-part injunction test raises questions under the Supreme Court’s Bloomberg v. Zee ruling.
MediaNama is the premier source of information and analysis on Technology Policy in India. More about MediaNama, and contact information, here.
© 2024 Mixed Bag Media Pvt. Ltd.
source