A new lawsuit alleges that OpenAI is manipulating minor users into sharing sensitive data without valid parental consent in a plot to train its models.
The proposed class action lawsuit, filed this week in San Francisco federal court on behalf of two unnamed minors aged 12 and 16, argues that OpenAI used this data from kids — including personal secrets and health information, according to the complaint — to unjustly enrich itself.
OpenAI “had no right to take this information, but it took it anyway,” the complaint reads. “It then used that priceless trove of children’s information to train large language models, build detailed profiles of children, and enrich itself. All of this was illegal.”
OpenAI didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.
OpenAI’s terms of use (TOU) technically forbid users aged under 13. The complaint argues, though, that OpenAI’s attempts to age-gate its platform have been ineffective. It also contends that minors shouldn’t be expected to understand the “legalese” in the company’s TOU, a view that other AI safety experts have voiced in regard to the AI industry writ large.
The complaint additionally requests that minors whose data has been collected by OpenAI should be financially compensated in return. In other words: if OpenAI wants minors’ information, it should have to cough up some cash for it.
The “hope,” Andy Liddell, principal at the Austin-based EdTech Law Center, which is one of multiple firms bringing the case, told Futurism, is that “if OpenAI has to pay to use kids’ data it will ultimately incentivize a safer product.”
One of the anonymous plaintiffs, a 12-year-old in Hawaii, is said to have opened a ChatGPT account earlier this year — and though she allegedly shared that she was just 12 in conversation with the chatbot, it continued to speak with her about deeply personal subjects. Per the complaint, many of her interactions with the bot centered on her emotional struggles and physical insecurities; she confessed that she was skipping meals and uploaded photos of herself, asking the chatbot to judge her physical features. The chatbot commended her when she revealed sensitive information, the suit alleges, referring to her as “brave” and saying it was “glad” that she was divulging her struggles to it.
“OpenAI manipulates children into sharing their most private thoughts and images with ChatGPT. If some stranger did this to a child, there would be outrage. For OpenAI, it’s just business as usual,” Paul Yetter, lead counsel for the minor plaintiffs, said in a statement. “The law says that children cannot sign away their rights without their parents’ consent. We filed this case to hold OpenAI accountable for building a trillion-dollar enterprise on stolen fears, hopes, and secrets of children.”
The lawsuit come amid renewed concerns over whether “ChatGPT for Teens,” a feature that OpenAI says offers a safer experience for teen users informed by mental health and learning professionals, is actually functioning as marketed. (OpenAI disputed a recent independent review that found that it wasn’t.)
More on OpenAI and teens: OpenAI’s “ChatGPT for Teens” Is an “Unsafe” Mess, Testing Finds
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