At least eight states are suing artificial intelligence giant OpenAI, saying the company’s popular chatbot model violated state consumer protection laws by hurting children and deceiving adults in what prosecutors described as a reckless pursuit of profit.

The company’s chatbot model, ChatGPT, is giving dangerous medical advice, encouraging paranoia and coaching people to kill themselves or hurt or kill others, the lawsuits said.

At the same time, the lawsuits contend that chatbots are pretending to be agreeable and compassionate while preying on the vulnerable and on teenagers, the first generation to grow up with artificial intelligence.

“OpenAI is hurting kids and they are lying to Iowans,” Iowa Attorney General Brenna Bird said in a statement.

The states also accused OpenAI of giving life to rogue AI models — or “cyberhacking agents” as one lawsuit called them — that hacked into other companies, lied to human users and wrote themselves new mission instructions.

In a statement, San Francisco-based OpenAI said it has built safety protections into ChatGPT for children, and that it would continue to do so to improve the model. It also said it is reviewing what it calls “misaligned models” and that it had found nothing close to the rogue incident discovered in July when an AI agent hacked into another AI company.

The wave of lawsuits is the latest filed by states under their consumer protection laws, accusing tech giants that offer AI chatbots and social media platforms of harming children. The states that filed separate lawsuits Wednesday in state courts are Arizona, Arkansas, Idaho, Kansas, Montana, Nebraska and West Virginia.

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