The state of Texas sued OpenAI and its CEO, Sam Altman, on Oct. 23 for failing to disclose the risks and harms associated with using its large language model, ChatGPT.
Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton filed the lawsuit in Collin County District Court. The suit alleges that the company has violated the Texas Deceptive Trade Practices-Consumer Protection Act, which protects consumers from deceptive business claims.
The Office of the Attorney General wrote in a statement that the chatbot’s use has led to suicides, shootings and outputs harmful information. The suit also alleges that the company collects children’s data with no parental oversight and that minors have become addicted to the product.
Paxton, also the Republican nominee for the U.S. Senate in Texas, has sued other technology companies, including Meta and TikTok, for failing to protect children using their products.
“Despite marketing itself as a safe and reliable tool, OpenAI has failed to protect Texans, including children, from the many harms of relying on its artificial intelligence chatbot, ChatGPT,” the attorney general’s office wrote in a statement.
The lawsuit calls for OpenAI to prevent minors from using its product and require a court-appointed independent third-party evaluator to approve new ChatGPT models before their release. The suit also asks OpenAI to pay damages to the state of Texas.
An OpenAI spokesperson said the company is willing to collaborate with the Texas government to implement stronger safety safeguards across the AI industry, not just its own company, according to reporting from The Texas Tribune.
Since June, UT students and employees have been able to sign in with their UT EID email to access education services from OpenAI’s ChatGPT and Anthropic’s Claude’s for free. Roughly 18,000 faculty, staff and students have created accounts for both artificial intelligence platforms, said Mario Guerra, UT’s associate vice president of AI platforms and innovation.
The University signed a two-year agreement for ChatGPT Edu on May 6, which includes 75,000 users and 24.5 million credits, at approximately $1.1 million per year, according to the contract.
Last Friday, the offices of Academic Technology and Enterprise Technology released a campus-wide AI Sentiment Survey, a research study on the perspectives of students, faculty and staff regarding generative AI.
The survey results will be shared with the AI Pedagogy Task Force and the UT AI Advisory Council, and will lead to the creation of a focus group to inform the University’s approach to AI.
The survey aims to understand the UT community’s attitudes and opinions towards generative AI in education. It includes questions regarding concerns about AI’s impact on personal privacy, job security and long-term societal impact. The last day to take the survey is Dec. 10.
