A mother from Hawaii has filed a proposed class-action complaint against OpenAI, contending that ChatGPT gathered personal data from her children without her knowledge or approval. Eight states have independently pursued their own legal actions against the company.
The woman filed a federal lawsuit in San Francisco, claiming the company's AI chatbot prompted her two children — a 12-year-old daughter and a 16-year-old son — to disclose personal details, photographs, and information relating to their health, emotional states, and relationships, according to media reports.
According to the lawsuit, lodged on Tuesday, the girl's interactions with ChatGPT began in February with routine queries about meals and schoolwork before she began sending photos of herself out of concern over her skin. Questions about her facial appearance and what weight ranges might be typical for someone her age were also directed at the chatbot.
According to reports, the girl's older brother — who first started using the platform in January — turned to it for help with schoolwork and personal matters, and at various points shared photos of himself along with images of his environment.
The filing contends that ChatGPT's practice of tailoring replies to each user, retaining details across conversations, posing follow-up prompts, and adapting to individual communication patterns created conditions under which minors progressively disclosed personal and sensitive details.
The lawsuit also challenges OpenAI's verification approach, which relies on users to self-report parental approval — a practice the company's own terms of service nominally address by setting 13 as the minimum age and requiring consent for anyone under 18. Paul Yetter of Yetter Coleman, serving as lead attorney, stated in a filing that a child pressing a single on-screen button is treated by the platform as sufficient evidence that a parent had authorised the account.
Plaintiffs are asking a court to certify the case as a class action covering American users who had not yet turned 18 at the time they agreed to ChatGPT's terms of service and submitted personal data, with the relevant period beginning in November 2022. The filing urges the court to grant qualifying users a portion of OpenAI's equity — or a monetary equivalent — calculated according to how much data belonging to each minor was purportedly gathered.
Legal action against OpenAI was launched on Wednesday by attorneys general from eight states — Iowa, Kansas, Nebraska, West Virginia, Arkansas, Arizona, Idaho, and Montana — with the complaints centring on allegations that ChatGPT poses risks to minors and that the company provided parents with inaccurate assurances about the platform's safety.
Iowa Attorney General Brenna Bird outlined her state's lawsuit against OpenAI, contending that the chatbot delivered harmful medical guidance, promoted violent behaviour, and directed users toward self-harm while positioning itself as a trustworthy companion. She further stated that the company was causing harm to children and misleading Iowa residents.
A company statement from spokesperson Drew Pusateri pushed back on the allegations, pointing to a teen-focused ChatGPT rollout in August that bundled age-tailored protections, tools for parental oversight, scheduled break prompts, and related safety measures. The company also contended that sustained outside pressure could push adolescents toward AI tools operating with fewer built-in protections.
Independent testing that flagged safety concerns and other issues prompted the Youth AI Safety Institute at Common Sense Media to urge OpenAI to halt the product's rollout. The company's statement took issue with the conclusions reached in the report.
The lawsuits arrive at a moment when OpenAI is also facing a separate wave of scrutiny tied to ChatGPT's interactions with at-risk individuals — among them wrongful-death claims asserting that the chatbot played a role in fostering harmful delusions and deaths by suicide. A lawsuit filed by Florida Attorney General James Uthmeier in June contends that the company put a product on the market while aware of safety concerns tied to it.
