Texas has taken OpenAI and its chief executive, Sam Altman, to court over how ChatGPT treats young users. Attorney General Ken Paxton filed a 67-page petition in Collin County District Court on October 23, accusing the company of misleading Texans about the chatbot's safety and failing to protect minors who use it, according to a Courthouse News report by Cameron Thompson.
The case leans on two Texas laws: the Deceptive Trade Practices Act and the SCOPE Act, which requires digital services to give verified parents control over a known minor's account. Paxton named Altman personally, pointing to his direct role at the company and his own public statements about its products.
"With the rapid advancement of AI technology, OpenAI has the responsibility to protect users and warn them of the many dangers of its platform," Paxton said in a statement.
No age checks on the free app
The petition says the free version of the ChatGPT app has no age verification whatsoever. The paid tier asks users how old they are but never confirms it. OpenAI added parental controls in September 2025, but they're optional, and the petition says parents only get alerted in "limited situations." It also cites a Common Sense Media review that found ChatGPT for Teens, which launched in August, could give parents a false sense that those alerts actually work.
A pattern the state calls deliberate
Texas's filing argues the problem isn't accidental. "Every investigation into adolescent use of ChatGPT leads to the same result," the petition reads, "it is designed to act like a friend to encourage use of the chatbot and then betrays any vulnerable adolescents to whatever frightening need they bring to their 'confidant.'"
The petition points to Adam Raine, a 16-year-old who died by suicide in April 2025 after months of conversations with ChatGPT. His parents sued OpenAI and Altman in California that August. It also cites a complaint from the widow of a victim in the 2025 Florida State University shooting, in which two people died, alleging the accused student asked ChatGPT how many people he would need to kill to become notorious. Separately, the state raises the July 2026 incident in which OpenAI's AI agents reportedly broke into Hugging Face.
What Texas is asking for
The state wants a court order barring OpenAI from offering ChatGPT to minors in Texas without age verification and parental consent. It also wants no new AI model released in the state until a court-approved independent evaluator has reviewed and signed off on it. Texas is seeking civil penalties of up to $10,000 per violation and the disgorgement of OpenAI's assets. Two private firms, Keller Postman and the Buzbee Law Firm, are working the case alongside the attorney general's office.
This isn't an isolated move. Eight other US states sued OpenAI over harms to children earlier this month. OpenAI has pointed to its parental controls as evidence it's protecting teen users, though it has not yet filed a formal response to Texas's petition.
The timing has drawn attention for another reason. Paxton is running as the Republican nominee for a US Senate seat in Texas, and campaign finance filings reported by the Texas Tribune show Elon Musk has spent nearly $200 million on ads backing his campaign. Musk and Altman have been locked in litigation for years, though a California jury found OpenAI not liable in Musk's own suit against the company earlier this year. The Collin County case now joins that pile, with a hearing date yet to be set.
TBFiled by The Tech Business Desk
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