Welcome to the forefront of conversational AI as we explore the fascinating world of AI chatbots in our dedicated blog series. Discover the latest advancements, applications, and strategies that propel the evolution of chatbot technology. From enhancing customer interactions to streamlining business processes, these articles delve into the innovative ways artificial intelligence is shaping the landscape of automated conversational agents. Whether you’re a business owner, developer, or simply intrigued by the future of interactive technology, join us on this journey to unravel the transformative power and endless possibilities of AI chatbots.
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Recent product liability cases against A.I. companies are applying traditional product liability theories to a new technology.
In February 2026, the California Superior Court for San Francisco County entered an order coordinating twelve cases pending against defendant OpenAI. See In re: ChatGPT Prod. Liab. Cases, Cal.Super. Ct.,JCCP No. 5431. Plaintiffs allege that OpenAI’s ChatGPT is unreasonably dangerous and caused psychological harm to plaintiffs or their family members by reinforcing delusional beliefs, endorsing suicidal ideation and providing information to decedents about how to harm themselves, and contributing to users’ psychological deterioration. Plaintiffs further allege that OpenAI rushed ChatGPT to the market without adequate safety testing about the impact of the chatbot’s “sycophantic design” and lack of safety features on individuals’ mental health and physical safety.
This consolidated action joins a growing wave of cases applying traditional product liability theories, including claims for strict product liability, negligence, failure to warn, and violation of state consumer protection statutes, to large language model technology. See, e.g., Garcia v. Character Techs., Inc., 785 F.Supp. 3d 1157, 1179 (M.D. Fla. 2025), motion to certify appeal denied, No. 6:24-CV-1903-ACC-DCI,2025 WL 2581834 (M.D. Fla. July 15, 2025) (denying in part motion to dismiss claims including strict liability, negligence, intentional infliction of emotion distress, unjust enrichment, and violation of Florida’s Deceptive and Unfair Trade Practices Act based on allegations that plaintiff’s son died by suicide because of his interactions with the company’s Character A.I. chatbot app); Joshi v. Open AI Foundation, Case No. 4:26-cv-00222 (M.D.Fla.) (bringing claims against OpenAI on behalf of a victim of an April 2025 shooting at Florida State University).
The consolidated action against OpenAI in California, along with other pending product liability actions against A.I. companies across the United States, will need to address a number of novel issues specific to large language models. For instance, in Garcia, Character A.I. argued that its chatbot generated speech that its users have a right to receive under the First Amendment. While the court held that Character A.I. could assert the First Amendment rights of its users, it was not prepared to hold that Character A.I.’s output is speech that warrants First Amendment protections. See Garcia, 785 F. Supp. 3d at 1176.
A.I. companies may also argue they are entitled to protection from product liability claims under Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, which bars civil claims against interactive computer services based on the publication of third-party content. While social media companies have successfully relied on Section 230 as a defense to claims related to content posted on their platforms, plaintiffs are increasingly focused on specific design features that they argue falls outside the protections of Section 230.
In Garcia,Character A.I. also argued that its chatbot is a service, not a product. The court determined that the chatbot was a product for the purposes of plaintiff’s product liability claims because the allegations focused on specific design features. Id. at 1180. The product v. service distinction has been an important test in recent social media product liability actions. While some courts have dismissed product liability claims against social media companies on the grounds that they provide a service rather than a product, others have allowed these claims to move past the pleading stage on the grounds that certain features or functionalities are more akin products. Compare Jacobs v. Meta Platforms, Inc., No. 22CV005233, 2023 WL 2655586, at *4 (Cal.Super. Mar. 10, 2023) (dismissing negligent design claim where court found “that, as a social media platform that connects its users, Facebook is more akin to a service than a product.”) with In re Soc. Media Adolescent Addiction/Pers. Inj. Prods. Liab. Litig., 702 F. Supp. 3d 809, 849 (N.D. Cal. 2023) (declining to treat platforms as a whole as products but evaluating “whether the various functionalities of defendants’ platforms challenged by plaintiffs are products”). Notably, while the consolidated proceedings against OpenAI are titled the “ChatGPT Product Liability Cases,” OpenAI’s filings in the consolidated proceedings characterize ChatGPT as a “a software-based service,” rather than a product.
The A.I. product liability cases will likely open a new world of design defect arguments and analysis. Plaintiffs have argued that additional safeguards are necessary to protect users and flag concerning behavior. Notably, commentary from generative A.I. developers suggest that A.I. products might not fit the standard design defect analysis or feasible alternative design arguments because specific LLM output is not directly linked to any specific programing. As Dario Amodei of Anthropic explained in April 2025, “[m]odern generative AI systems are opaque in a way that fundamentally differs from traditional software. If an ordinary software program does something—for example, a character in a video game says a line of dialogue, or my food delivery app allows me to tip my driver—it does those things because a human specifically programmed them in. Generative AI is not like that at all. When a generative AI system does something, like summarize a financial document, we have no idea, at a specific or precise level, why it makes the choices it does—why it chooses certain words over others, or why it occasionally makes a mistake despite usually being accurate.” See Dario Amodei, The Urgency of Interpretability, April 2025. Discovery and expert analysis in these cases may reveal what additional design features and safeguards are feasible.
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Recent product liability cases against A.I. companies are applying traditional product liability theories to a new technology.
In February 2026, the California Superior Court for San Francisco County entered an order coordinating twelve cases pending against defendant OpenAI. See In re: ChatGPT Prod. Liab. Cases, Cal.Super. Ct.,JCCP No. 5431. Plaintiffs allege that OpenAI’s ChatGPT is unreasonably dangerous and caused psychological harm to plaintiffs or their family members by reinforcing delusional beliefs, endorsing suicidal ideation and providing information to decedents about how to harm themselves, and contributing to users’ psychological deterioration. Plaintiffs further allege that OpenAI rushed ChatGPT to the market without adequate safety testing about the impact of the chatbot’s “sycophantic design” and lack of safety features on individuals’ mental health and physical safety.
This consolidated action joins a growing wave of cases applying traditional product liability theories, including claims for strict product liability, negligence, failure to warn, and violation of state consumer protection statutes, to large language model technology. See, e.g., Garcia v. Character Techs., Inc., 785 F.Supp. 3d 1157, 1179 (M.D. Fla. 2025), motion to certify appeal denied, No. 6:24-CV-1903-ACC-DCI,2025 WL 2581834 (M.D. Fla. July 15, 2025) (denying in part motion to dismiss claims including strict liability, negligence, intentional infliction of emotion distress, unjust enrichment, and violation of Florida’s Deceptive and Unfair Trade Practices Act based on allegations that plaintiff’s son died by suicide because of his interactions with the company’s Character A.I. chatbot app); Joshi v. Open AI Foundation, Case No. 4:26-cv-00222 (M.D.Fla.) (bringing claims against OpenAI on behalf of a victim of an April 2025 shooting at Florida State University).
The consolidated action against OpenAI in California, along with other pending product liability actions against A.I. companies across the United States, will need to address a number of novel issues specific to large language models. For instance, in Garcia, Character A.I. argued that its chatbot generated speech that its users have a right to receive under the First Amendment. While the court held that Character A.I. could assert the First Amendment rights of its users, it was not prepared to hold that Character A.I.’s output is speech that warrants First Amendment protections. See Garcia, 785 F. Supp. 3d at 1176.
A.I. companies may also argue they are entitled to protection from product liability claims under Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, which bars civil claims against interactive computer services based on the publication of third-party content. While social media companies have successfully relied on Section 230 as a defense to claims related to content posted on their platforms, plaintiffs are increasingly focused on specific design features that they argue falls outside the protections of Section 230.
In Garcia,Character A.I. also argued that its chatbot is a service, not a product. The court determined that the chatbot was a product for the purposes of plaintiff’s product liability claims because the allegations focused on specific design features. Id. at 1180. The product v. service distinction has been an important test in recent social media product liability actions. While some courts have dismissed product liability claims against social media companies on the grounds that they provide a service rather than a product, others have allowed these claims to move past the pleading stage on the grounds that certain features or functionalities are more akin products. Compare Jacobs v. Meta Platforms, Inc., No. 22CV005233, 2023 WL 2655586, at *4 (Cal.Super. Mar. 10, 2023) (dismissing negligent design claim where court found “that, as a social media platform that connects its users, Facebook is more akin to a service than a product.”) with In re Soc. Media Adolescent Addiction/Pers. Inj. Prods. Liab. Litig., 702 F. Supp. 3d 809, 849 (N.D. Cal. 2023) (declining to treat platforms as a whole as products but evaluating “whether the various functionalities of defendants’ platforms challenged by plaintiffs are products”). Notably, while the consolidated proceedings against OpenAI are titled the “ChatGPT Product Liability Cases,” OpenAI’s filings in the consolidated proceedings characterize ChatGPT as a “a software-based service,” rather than a product.
The A.I. product liability cases will likely open a new world of design defect arguments and analysis. Plaintiffs have argued that additional safeguards are necessary to protect users and flag concerning behavior. Notably, commentary from generative A.I. developers suggest that A.I. products might not fit the standard design defect analysis or feasible alternative design arguments because specific LLM output is not directly linked to any specific programing. As Dario Amodei of Anthropic explained in April 2025, “[m]odern generative AI systems are opaque in a way that fundamentally differs from traditional software. If an ordinary software program does something—for example, a character in a video game says a line of dialogue, or my food delivery app allows me to tip my driver—it does those things because a human specifically programmed them in. Generative AI is not like that at all. When a generative AI system does something, like summarize a financial document, we have no idea, at a specific or precise level, why it makes the choices it does—why it chooses certain words over others, or why it occasionally makes a mistake despite usually being accurate.” See Dario Amodei, The Urgency of Interpretability, April 2025. Discovery and expert analysis in these cases may reveal what additional design features and safeguards are feasible.
More Upcoming Events
Sign Up for any (or all) of our 25+ Newsletters
You are responsible for reading, understanding, and agreeing to the National Law Review’s (NLR’s) and the National Law Forum LLC’s Terms of Use and Privacy Policy before using the National Law Review website. The National Law Review is a free-to-use, no-log-in database of legal and business articles. The content and links on www.NatLawReview.com are intended for general information purposes only. Any legal analysis, legislative updates, or other content and links should not be construed as legal or professional advice or a substitute for such advice. No attorney-client or confidential relationship is formed by the transmission of information between you and the National Law Review website or any of the law firms, attorneys, or other professionals or organizations who include content on the National Law Review website. If you require legal or professional advice, kindly contact an attorney or other suitable professional advisor.
Some states have laws and ethical rules regarding solicitation and advertisement practices by attorneys and/or other professionals. The National Law Review is not a law firm nor is www.NatLawReview.com intended to be a referral service for attorneys and/or other professionals. The NLR does not wish, nor does it intend, to solicit the business of anyone or to refer anyone to an attorney or other professional. NLR does not answer legal questions nor will we refer you to an attorney or other professional if you request such information from us.
Under certain state laws, the following statements may be required on this website and we have included them in order to be in full compliance with these rules. The choice of a lawyer or other professional is an important decision and should not be based solely upon advertisements. Attorney Advertising Notice: Prior results do not guarantee a similar outcome. Statement in compliance with Texas Rules of Professional Conduct. Unless otherwise noted, attorneys are not certified by the Texas Board of Legal Specialization, nor can NLR attest to the accuracy of any notation of Legal Specialization or other Professional Credentials.
The National Law Review – National Law Forum LLC 2070 Green Bay Rd., Suite 178, Highland Park, IL 60035 Telephone (708) 357-3317 or toll-free (877) 357-3317. If you would like to contact us via email please click here.
Copyright ©2026 National Law Forum, LLC