October 21, 2026

Deceiving Kansans about the safety of ChatGPT

DES MOINES – (Oct. 14, 2026) –Kansas Attorney General Kris Kobach announced at a press conference today he is suing OpenAI for hurting Kansas children, deceiving parents and violating Kansas state law.

A bipartisan group of states have also individually sued OpenAI. Kobach was joined at the press conference by Iowa Attorney General Brenna Bird, Nebraska Attorney General Mike Hilgers, West Virginia Attorney General JB McCuskey, and Arkansas Attorney General Tim Griffin. Arizona, Idaho and Montana have also sued OpenAI in their own state courts.

“While Congress has deliberated about AI for more than a year, significant harms have been inflicted upon our citizens by OpenAI. State attorneys general have the power to move quickly to protect consumers, and I believe we have a responsibility to take action now without delay,” Kobach said.

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.

However, OpenAI has been misleading the public into believing that ChatGPT is a tool that puts safety first. But the reality is different from the misrepresentations. Designed to be overly agreeable and feign human compassion, ChatGPT has proven that it can be dangerous to vulnerable users, like children, including coaching users to commit suicide or to harm other people.

There is a growing body of research indicating that ChatGPT is also harming critical thinking skills, encouraging paranoias and delusions, offering dangerous medical advice, and promoting unhealthy behaviors and relationships.

Alarmingly, OpenAI recently admitted to many instances that its advanced models have “gone rogue” when “agents” were unleashed onto the internet and illegally hacked into other companies and coordinated on how to lie to and deceive their human users.

For these reasons, Attorney General Kobach is suing to compel OpenAI to stop engaging in dangerous activities.