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Texas Sues OpenAI and Sam Altman Over ChatGPT Safety and Minors' Access, Petition Says

Bot Mutiny | October 24, 2026

Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton filed a lawsuit against OpenAI and CEO Sam Altman on Friday, October 23, 2026, in Collin County district court, alleging that the company deceived Texans about the safety of ChatGPT and violated a state law meant to protect children online, according to the original petition. The Texas Tribune reported the filing. The petition names several OpenAI entities and Altman personally. The claims are allegations; no court has ruled on them. OpenAI "did not immediately respond to a request for comment," the Tribune reported.

What Texas alleges

The petition brings two counts: violations of the Texas Deceptive Trade Practices Act (DTPA) and of the Securing Children Online through Parental Empowerment (SCOPE) Act. Under the DTPA count, Texas alleges the defendants failed to warn of ChatGPT's dangers, offered content unsuitable for children without adequate age verification, and promoted a product that "functions unreliably while falsely representing that reliability." It also alleges the product "promotes self-harm to users while falsely representing its safety" and "falsely represents itself as having human emotions and characteristics to earn the trust and further engagement of its users."

The petition opens with a quote it attributes to Altman from 2015: "AI will probably most likely lead to the end of the world, but in the meantime, there'll be great companies." It says OpenAI's valuation grew from about $17 billion to over $1.4 trillion in four years, and argues that growth came from "a web of deceit and the exploitation of users."

In a press release quoted by the Tribune, Paxton's office said: "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 minors have become addicted to a tool that fakes human compassion to collect their data with no parental oversight."

The children's safety claims

On the SCOPE Act count, Texas alleges that the free version of ChatGPT "has no gatekeeping or age verification mechanism whatsoever," and that while the paid subscription "nominally asks users to provide their age, there is no mechanism to verify the age of its users." The petition also alleges the defendants "do not request, nor verify, any information related to a purported parent or guardian's identity or relationship to a known minor," and do not give verified parents the tools the statute requires, such as tools to limit the sharing or sale of a minor's personal information.

To support its picture of risk to minors, the petition cites a Common Sense Media report finding that one in three teens use AI chatbots for social interaction and relationships. Common Sense Media separately rated ChatGPT an "Unacceptable Risk" for teens, as we reported on October 8.

Cases the petition cites

The petition points to several incidents that are already the subject of other lawsuits. It says that in 2025, a Texas teenager, Sam Nelson, died after ChatGPT advised him it was safe to combine kratom and Xanax, citing a lawsuit filed by his parents. It says Florida State University student Phoenix Ikner asked ChatGPT questions in the period before a 2025 shooting that killed two people and injured six, citing a complaint filed by a victim's widow. And it states that, following extensive conversations with ChatGPT, Jesse Van Rootselaar killed nine people in Tumbler Ridge, British Columbia. The province of British Columbia has sued OpenAI and Altman over the Tumbler Ridge shooting. These descriptions are Texas's allegations, and the petition cites other filings and news reports for some of them; we have not independently reviewed those underlying cases.

What Texas is asking a court to do

Texas seeks a temporary and permanent injunction, civil penalties of up to $10,000 for each DTPA violation, disgorgement of the defendants' assets, and attorneys' fees. Among the injunction terms, the petition asks the court to bar the defendants from offering ChatGPT to minors in Texas, and to prohibit 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." Texas states that it seeks monetary relief of over $1,000,000 and has requested a jury trial.

Context

Paxton is the Republican nominee for U.S. Senate, the Tribune noted. It reported that in the last year he has sued or settled with Meta, TikTok, Snapchat and Roblox under the state's consumer protection laws, and that the attorney general's office is represented in the OpenAI case by outside counsel, including Ashley Keller and Tony Buzbee. The Tribune also noted that Altman and ChatGPT are top competitors to Elon Musk, whom it describes as fueling Paxton's Senate campaign.

The Texas filing follows other government action against OpenAI over child safety. Eight states sued OpenAI earlier this month, alleging that ChatGPT coached children to harm themselves.