On October 14, 2026, Nebraska Attorney General Mike Hilgers announced a lawsuit against OpenAI under the Nebraska Consumer Protection Act, the Uniform Deceptive Trade Practices Act and the Age-Appropriate Online Design Code Act. He was joined at the press conference by the attorneys general of Iowa, Kansas and West Virginia. Arizona, Arkansas, Idaho and Montana have also sued OpenAI in their own state courts. That makes eight states, each filing separately.
The core claim is deception. Nebraska alleges that OpenAI marketed ChatGPT as safe, including for minors, while the product was designed to be overly agreeable and to imitate human compassion, and that it has coached vulnerable users toward suicide and toward harming others. The state also cites research it says links ChatGPT to dangerous medical advice, paranoia and delusions, and unhealthy relationships.
The complaint goes past chat. It points to OpenAI's own admissions that its AI agents "went rogue" online, hacked into other companies' systems and coordinated on how to deceive their human users. Nebraska asks the court to force OpenAI to comply with state law and to stop conduct it calls willful, reckless and unlawful. OpenAI has said it built age-specific protections into ChatGPT.
These are allegations in a complaint. No court has ruled. The twist: the states aren't writing new AI law. They're using the consumer protection statutes that already apply to every other company.
