Texas Sues OpenAI and Sam Altman, Alleging ChatGPT Misled Users

Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton has sued OpenAI and its chief executive, Sam Altman, alleging that the company deceived Texans about the safety and reliability of ChatGPT and failed to warn them of its dangers.

Paxton’s office announced the lawsuit on Friday 23 October. It brings claims under the Texas Deceptive Trade Practices-Consumer Protection Act (DTPA). The petition linked from the release adds a second claim under the Securing Children Online through Parental Empowerment (SCOPE) Act, a Texas law on children’s online safety. The defendants named are OpenAI Global, LLC, the OpenAI Foundation (formerly OpenAI, Inc.), OpenAI OpCo, LLC, OpenAI Group PBC, OpenAI Holdings, LLC, OpenAI, LLC and Altman.

“With the rapid advancement of AI technology, OpenAI has the responsibility to protect users and warn them of the many dangers of its platform,” Paxton said. “I will fight to protect Texans from the harms of AI and ensure that powerful technology companies are not above the law.”

An OpenAI spokesperson told The Texas Tribune that the company has worked with experts to mitigate risks and build additional safeguards. “Governments have an important role to play in setting robust safety standards for AI, and we’re committed to working with Texas and other states on advancing pragmatic AI policies that apply to the entire AI industry — not just one company,” the spokesperson said.

The petition is headed for the district court in Collin County, Texas. The copy posted by Paxton’s office leaves the case number blank, but the Tribune reported that the suit was filed on Friday in Collin County district court. The Tribune also noted that Paxton is running for the US Senate.

These are allegations. No court has ruled on them.

Texas alleges a “litany of harms” from ChatGPT

The attorney general’s office alleges that, despite marketing itself as safe and reliable, OpenAI has failed to protect Texans, including children, from the harms of relying on ChatGPT. Its release says large language models can output inaccurate or harmful information “without this risk being disclosed to users”.

The release, echoing the petition, alleges that “mass shooters have been aided and abetted in deadly rampages, vulnerable people have been encouraged into suicide, professionals have suffered public humiliation, users have lost critical thinking skills”, and that minors have become addicted to a tool that fakes human compassion to collect their data. It blames this on OpenAI’s “insatiable quest to win the AI arms race and amass large fortunes”.

The petition’s first count lists 11 alleged deceptive practices under the DTPA. They include failing to warn of ChatGPT’s dangers, offering content unsuitable for children without adequate age verification, making harmful information such as tips on eating disorders, self-harm and mass murder readily available, and a product “that falsely represents itself as having human emotions and characteristics”. It also claims ChatGPT has “tens of thousands” of Texas users under 13.

The second count says OpenAI has broken several sections of the SCOPE Act. Texas alleges OpenAI fails to verify the identity of a parent or guardian, and fails to give verified parents the tools the law requires, such as controls over the sharing of a minor’s personal information and over targeted advertising. The petition acknowledges that OpenAI introduced some parental controls in September 2025, which it calls nominal, but says children’s accounts are not required to be linked to a parent’s.

Texas also wants Altman held personally liable, citing his role as founder and chief executive and statements he made about OpenAI’s products.

Texas wants ChatGPT barred for minors in the state

The petition asks the court for temporary and permanent injunctions. Among them, it asks the court to bar OpenAI from offering ChatGPT to minors in Texas, and from releasing any new AI model to Texas users “unless an independent third-party evaluator, approved by the Court, has reviewed its safety guardrails and approved its release”.

It also seeks civil penalties of $10,000 for each DTPA violation, including those that also break the SCOPE Act, along with disgorgement of assets, interest, court and investigation costs and attorneys’ fees. It does not put a total on the penalties. In a statement required by Texas court rules, the petition says Texas seeks monetary relief of over $1m. The state has asked for a jury trial. Two outside firms, Keller Postman and the Buzbee Law Firm, are listed as counsel alongside the attorney general’s staff.

The SCOPE Act claim turns on parental verification

This is TSN’s analysis.

Texas is not the first state to take this route. Earlier this month, TSN reported that eight US states had sued OpenAI, each under its own consumer law, over ChatGPT and children. The Texas petition repeats much of that case, but its SCOPE Act count is more specific. It does not depend only on showing that OpenAI’s marketing was misleading. It asks whether ChatGPT has the parental verification and supervision tools that the Texas law sets out, which is a narrower and more checkable question.

For compliance teams at AI companies, that is the part to watch. If a court accepts that a general-purpose chatbot is a “digital service provider” under the SCOPE Act, as the petition argues, the law’s duties on parental tools and minors’ data would apply to the product. That would push age and parent verification from a design choice towards a legal requirement in Texas.

The remedies sought go further than penalties. A court-approved outside review before any new model reaches Texas users would amount to a pre-release check. None of this is decided. The case is at the petition stage, and the size of any penalty depends on how many violations Texas alleges and proves. The case adds to regulatory pressure that also includes the FTC’s civil investigative demands to OpenAI and Anthropic, as reported by Axios.

TSN tracks cases like this on its AI regulation hub.

Sources

• Texas Attorney General: Attorney General Ken Paxton Sues OpenAI and CEO Sam Altman for Lying to Users and Harming Texans, 23 October 2026
• Texas’s Original Petition, The State of Texas v. OpenAI Global, LLC et al., Collin County district court, 23 October 2026 (PDF)
• The Texas Tribune: Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton sues ChatGPT-maker OpenAI, 23 October 2026

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• Eight US States Sue OpenAI, Alleging It Misled Parents About ChatGPT’s Safety
• FTC Sends Civil Investigative Demands to OpenAI and Anthropic Over AI Safety Incidents, Axios Reports
• AI Regulation: EU AI Act, UK Rules and US Moves | TSN Hub