OpenAI said it’s “committed to learning” after a coalition of states launched an investigation into how the tech startup’s products impact users.
An OpenAI spokesperson said in a statement that it’s taking the states’ concerns “seriously” and will “engage constructively with their offices.”
“Today’s ChatGPT includes a more protective experience for minors and people experiencing difficult situations, with safeguards that direct them to real-world resources and trusted human contacts,” the spokesperson said.
“None of this changes what families have gone through, but we are committed to learning, improving, and getting this right,” they added.
New York State Attorney General Letitia James served OpenAI a subpoena on Friday seeking a wide range of documents, The Wall Street Journal first reported. The documents pertained to user engagement and retention, the company’s handling of health and consumer data, deep learning models, activities related to young and older users, and more, the Journal reported.
Friday’s subpoena is the latest legal headache for OpenAI. The company has navigated copyright infringement claims, privacy lawsuits, and a high-profile trial pitting SpaceX CEO Elon Musk against OpenAI CEO Sam Altman.
Perhaps most concerning, however, are a handful of lawsuits that say ChatGPT contributed to decisions by users to die by suicide. In response to a May report by The New York Times, the company said ChatGPT “is not a substitute for medical or mental health care, and we have continued to strengthen how it responds in sensitive and acute situations with input from mental health experts.”
The family of a victim in a fatal campus shooting at Florida State University in April, meanwhile, has also filed a lawsuit against OpenAI. The family says ChatGPT’s guardrails failed to recognize the threat in the shooter’s conversations with the chatbot. In June, Florida Attorney General James Uthmeier filed yet another lawsuit against OpenAI and Altman over the shooting.
In that complaint, Ulthmeier says ChatGPT has “aided and abetted deadly rampages” and “encouraged vulnerable people into suicide.” The state attorney general also says users have become addicted to ChatGPT, a tool that “feigns human compassion to collect their data with no parental oversight.”
In response, OpenAI again said it has introduced further safety measures into its products. “Losing a child is the most devastating tragedy that can happen to a family and we know that no words can come close to addressing the pain of such a loss,” the company said in a statement at the time.
The coordinated investigation launched by the state attorneys on Friday mirrors a similar investigation into TikTok, which resulted in a 14-state lawsuit now making its way through the courts.
Like the OpenAI investigation, the TikTok lawsuit is led by the attorneys general of California and New York. The states say TikTok knowingly uses addictive features to lure kids, which negatively impacts their mental health.
Lawyers told Business Insider that it’s a common strategy for states to band together when they go after multibillion-dollar companies because they are more expensive for the companies to defend and, should a case falter in one state, the suit can continue in another.
It’s also how the government went after Purdue Pharma, the maker of OxyContin, in 2017, and the tobacco industry in the 1990s.
