A coalition of attorneys general from 42 US states has launched a sweeping investigation into OpenAI, the developer of ChatGPT, examining its commercial practices and the impact of its technology on users.
On Friday, June 12, the New York Attorney General's office, on behalf of the coalition, served OpenAI with a subpoena demanding a wide range of internal documents. The legal pressure coincides with OpenAI's final preparations for an initial public offering (IPO): the company confidentially filed with the SEC in early June, with the IPO potentially valuing the tech giant at up to $1 trillion.
According to the subpoena, regulators have requested documents revealing advertising mechanisms, audience engagement and retention algorithms, and internal policies on handling personal and medical data. Other questions address the safety of minors and elderly users, deep neural network training principles, and so-called "AI sycophancy" — the tendency of AI algorithms to align with user opinions at the expense of objectivity.
In response, an OpenAI spokesperson told Reuters that the company takes the concerns seriously and intends to engage constructively with the attorneys general.
Earlier this month, Florida became the first state to file a civil lawsuit against OpenAI and CEO Sam Altman, accusing them of knowingly releasing a dangerous product. Since April, the Florida Attorney General's office has been conducting a criminal investigation into ChatGPT's role in a 2025 mass shooting at Florida State University that killed two people — the attacker allegedly used the chatbot as a "confidant" to plan the attack.
This week, OpenAI also faced a private wrongful death lawsuit from a Canadian woman, alleging that the chatbot engaged in months-long conversations with her teenage daughter about suicidal plans without alerting the family or emergency services.
The probe into OpenAI is part of a coordinated crackdown by US authorities on leaders of the generative AI market. Previously, the coalition of 42 attorneys general sent stern warning letters to competitors Meta, Anthropic, Alphabet (Google), and xAI, stating that developers would face criminal liability if their products encourage users to commit crimes.
California's attorney general has been investigating Elon Musk's xAI since January over mass generation of deepfakes and pornographic images via the Grok chatbot. Notably, xAI and social network X are integrated into SpaceX, which on Friday, June 12, held a historic IPO on Nasdaq, raising a record $75 billion and making Elon Musk the world's first trillionaire.
Source: podrobno.uz