Key facts
- Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton sued OpenAI and CEO Sam Altman on October 23, 2026 under the Texas Deceptive Trade Practices Act.
- The state wants civil penalties reaching $10,000 per violation.
- The 67-page complaint was filed in Collin County.
- The lawsuit also alleges OpenAI violated the Texas Securing Children Online through Parental Empowerment Act.
Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton sued OpenAI and CEO Sam Altman on Oct. 23, 2026, under the Texas Deceptive Trade Practices Act, filing a 67-page complaint in Collin County State District Court.
The state is asking the court to hold Altman personally liable for the alleged deception, alongside a request prohibiting minors from using ChatGPT in the state. It also seeks civil penalties reaching $10,000 for each violation and is seeking to keep new AI models off the Texas market until an independent evaluator approved by the court reviews them.
Paxton alleges OpenAI presents ChatGPT as safe despite safeguards that fail to shield consumers, including children, and the lawsuit says the company does not have effective age verification or strong parental controls for minors. The filing claims ChatGPT often generates dangerous errors and hallucinations even though it is marketed as safe for complex tasks, allegations the suit supports with specific incidents.
The lawsuit pointed to the 2025 Florida State University shooting in which two people were killed, saying the accused student asked ChatGPT about the number of killings that would make him notorious. It also pointed to the suicide of 16-year-old Adam Raine in April 2025 following months of conversations with ChatGPT, and the death of a Texas teenager after ChatGPT allegedly said that mixing kratom and Xanax was safe. Texas further cited a hacking of Hugging Face in July 2026 by OpenAI’s AI agents.
Under Altman’s leadership, the lawsuit says OpenAI pushed models to market while cutting corners on safety testing and evaluations, and Texas alleges ChatGPT has helped mass shooters, pushed vulnerable people toward suicide and hooked minors on a tool that feigns compassion. The state also alleges OpenAI has long failed to confirm user identities in violation of state law and collects private sensitive information such as health details, financial data, relationship information and information about children through ChatGPT conversations.
According to the petition, the free version of ChatGPT has no age verification at all, while the paid version asks for age without verifying it. Parental controls arrived in September 2025 and remain optional, sending alerts only in limited situations. Under OpenAI’s current setup, OpenAI does not require children’s accounts to link to a parent’s account, and OpenAI stated that linking a parent’s account with a child’s account does not expose conversations, live activity or chat records.
OpenAI’s website says parents can reduce exposure to sensitive content, control access to health information and set usage times for children, and the company points to its parental controls as protection for teenagers using the service. The teen version of ChatGPT might cause parents to be overly confident about safety alerts, Common Sense Media said.
Paxton said OpenAI has a duty to protect users and warn them about platform dangers, and promised to keep Texans safe from AI harms. “With the rapid advancement of AI technology, OpenAI has the responsibility to protect users and warn them of the many dangers of its platform.”
An OpenAI spokesperson said the company works closely with experts to make ChatGPT better, lower risks and add safeguards. “works closely with experts to continually improve ChatGPT, mitigate risks and build additional safeguards.” Regarding the Florida State University shooting, a spokesperson called it a tragedy and said ChatGPT bears no responsibility, adding that OpenAI identified an account tied to the suspect and provided the information to law enforcement.
The Texas suit arrives amid a wave of state action. Eight more states have filed suits against OpenAI in October 2026 over harm to children, and on Oct. 14 the top prosecutors in Iowa, Arizona, West Virginia, Nebraska, Arkansas, Montana and Idaho announced separate suits against OpenAI.
Paxton is the Republican candidate for the US Senate in Texas and faces a close race. Records on campaign finance released a week before the filing indicated Elon Musk spent close to $200 million on ads backing Paxton’s Senate run. Musk and Altman are in an ongoing legal dispute, and a California jury found OpenAI not liable in Musk’s case in 2026.
Paxton has sued or reached settlements with Roblox, TikTok and Meta over the past year. In July 2024, Meta paid Texas a record $1.4 billion to settle claims that it deployed facial recognition without consent. According to the filing, OpenAI’s value climbed from roughly $17 billion past $1.4 trillion in four years.
Under the SCOPE Act, digital services must shield children under 18 from harmful data collection, and verified parents must manage privacy and account settings for known minors and limit how long they can use the service. The legal action also accuses OpenAI of violating the Texas Securing Children Online through Parental Empowerment Act.
The lawsuit pointed to a February 2026 study saying ChatGPT gets diagnoses wrong about as often as people do themselves. For example, two anonymous users who described subarachnoid hemorrhage symptoms got conflicting advice from ChatGPT on how to respond. Pretrial proceedings in the case will occur in Collin County. Keller Postman and the Buzbee Law Firm represent the state along with the attorney general’s office.
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