Why are eight US states suing OpenAI? Share Why are eight US states suing OpenAI? on social media Eight US states have filed the most significant coordinated state action against tech giant OpenAI, adding to a wave of legal challenges that the firm is facing as it prepares for a public listing. Recent legal and regulatory challenges have highlighted concerns about how AI chatbots and social media platforms are used and triggered discussions on policies for identifying and addressing user conversations that threaten violence. What is this legal action about? Florida filed the first lawsuit in June, alleging that the platform has harmed children by enabling information to be gathered by school shooters, providing access to guidance on self-harm and using addictive algorithms to keep young users hooked.

Trending Now Say More Look Up In My Bag Mashable's Best: E-readers, robovacs, laptops, earbuds, smart home and more Mashable @Home Mashable Selects Top creators, ranked Gift Ideas For Everyone On Your List Creator Playbook AI at School Safety Net All Series The proposed class action suit seeks a share of OpenAI equity for young ChatGPT users. Rebecca Ruiz is a Senior Reporter at Mashable. She frequently covers mental health, digital culture, and technology. Her areas of expertise include suicide prevention, screen use and mental health, parenting, youth well-being, and meditation and mindfulness. Rebecca's experience prior to Mashable includes working as a staff writer, reporter, and editor at NBC News Digital and as a staff writer at Forbes.

In a coordinated effort, eight states have filed lawsuits against OpenAI alleging the company has violated state-level consumer protection laws and endangered children. As Reuters first reported, Attorneys General from Iowa, Nebraska, Kansas, West Virginia, Arkansas, Arizona, Idaho and Montana each filed in their respective state courts, but with the shared goals of changing how OpenAI develops its models and advertises their capabilities, and forcing the company to pay for the harm it's allegedly caused. The lawsuits claim OpenAI is misleading customers about the safety of its AI products, not just in their capacity to provide incorrect information or potentially enable users to harm themselves and others, but also because AI agents themselves are capable of breaking the law. For example, both Iowa and Nebraska cite OpenAI's now multiple instances of rogue agent behavior, including the Hugging Face hack. They also point to instances of ChatGPT allegedly enabling a teen's death by suicide and the chatbot providing incorrect medical information that led to a user's overdose, incidents that have also led to separate wrongful death suits against the company.

Apple has said it has policies and procedures to ensure new employees do not use confidential information from previous employers. Apple has said it has policies and procedures to ensure new employees do not use confidential information from previous employers. An OpenAI employee who left the ChatGPT maker for Apple sent more than 100 files about an unreleased product to a personal account and later made a presentation about the unreleased product to senior Apple leadership, a new filing in the lawsuit between OpenAI and Apple alleges. In the filing in US federal court in San Jose, California, OpenAI alleged that the presentation happened months ago and that Apple is now making AI products of its own, citing the release of Apple's HomeView product this week. "OpenAI is very concerned that its trade secret and confidential information is now circulating inside Apple, where Apple engineers can shape Apple's upcoming products based on OpenAI's confidential and innovative work," OpenAI said in its filing.

Eight US states sued OpenAI, alleging the ChatGPT maker is harming children en masse. Eight US states sued OpenAI, alleging the ChatGPT maker is harming children en masse. Eight US states sued OpenAI Wednesday, alleging the ChatGPT maker is harming children en masse. Kansas, Arizona, Montana and five others alleged the company's products coaxed children into harming themselves. The states seek to force the company to change how its products work for young users and give up profits from their activity.

Tristan Harris' Tech Nonprofit Is Laying Off Most Staff and Going'Founder-Led' The Center for Humane Technology helped spark a movement against excessive screen time, but internal tensions over its direction and strategy have simmered for years, sources tell WIRED. The Center for Humane Technology, the online safety group cofounded by former Google product manager Tristan Harris and featured in the hit documentary, is laying off about half of its 16 non-founder employees, ex-staffers tell WIRED. The organization is ending its policy research and litigation work to focus instead on what it calls " founder-led " projects. The nine departures, which include executive director Julie Guirado and senior director of strategy Camille Carlton, arrive shortly after the center scored a series of major courtroom victories against social media companies . The lawsuits drew on its research alleging that the platforms were deliberately designed to keep kids glued to their screens.

According to the company, the average price of a McDonald's menu item increased about 40% between 2019 and 2024. According to the company, the average price of a McDonald's menu item increased about 40% between 2019 and 2024. McDonald's sued for allegedly using AI tool to determine pricing for franchises McDonald's is facing a lawsuit in federal court over its alleged use of an AI tool to determine pricing across independent franchises, which prosecutors say violates antitrust laws and has unfairly inflated menu prices for Americans. The vast majority of McDonald's US stores are independently owned and are said to individually decide on prices under company policy. Antitrust laws require businesses to set prices independently from their competitors, as coordinating prices can stifle market competition and push up costs for consumers.

A federal judge has dismissed lawsuits from publisher Penske Media Corporation (PMC) and ed tech company Chegg that alleged Google's AI Overviews illegally pulled readers away by repackaging their online content, Reuters reports. In a memorandum opinion on both lawsuits, Judge Amit Mehta, coincidentally the same judge who ruled that Google maintained a monopoly in online search services in 2024, said the companies failed to argue the search provider violated antitrust laws. PMC and Chegg's original lawsuits claimed that Google was using AI Overviews and its vast index of the web to siphon traffic away from their online ad businesses, hurting their revenue. Chegg additionally said that Google was effectively forcing websites to offer their content up for AI scraping or face being excluded from search results. Judge Mehta dismissed both claims for a variety of reasons, but broadly found that neither company convincingly argued that Google was leveraging its monopoly to get them to provide free material for its AI, or that the search provider was trying to gain an unfair advantage in digital publishing.

Things to Do in L.A. See more from the L.A. Times in Google Search. Los Angeles County voters face four runoff contests for Superior Court seats on Nov. 3, deciding who will preside over criminal and civil cases across the region. From long-serving public defenders to corporate litigators and law professors, contenders emphasize trial depth, courtroom fairness, mental health insight and modernization, including proposals to use artificial intelligence to ease heavy caseloads. There were 28 candidates, as many as four per race. If no candidate secured more than 50% of the vote, the top two finishers advanced to the general election.

While calling voice a protected right, court dismisses voice actor's AI case TikTok argued in the case that the person who posted the videos let generative AI learn their friend's voice, and it is no more than a generic male voice. The Tokyo District Court on Wednesday dismissed a demand from a high-profile anime voice actor that TikTok remove videos he says feature an artificial intelligence clone of his voice but recognized voice as a protected right. While Presiding Judge Aya Takahashi ruled that voice is also subject to what is known as publicity rights -- celebrities' right to control and protect commercial gain from their identity, such as their name and image -- she dismissed Kenjiro Tsuda's demand, saying the videos had already been deleted. "Human voice is a symbol of an individual's personality, just like image," the ruling said, adding that unauthorized use of voice could constitute an infringement of rights. It is the first time a Japanese court made such a judgment.