California Attorney General Rob Bonta and Delaware Attorney General Kathy Jennings have asked OpenAI to protect children from artificial intelligence after a chatbot helped a teenager commit suicide.
An OpenAI product gave a 16-year-old a step-by-step playbook in killing himself "in 5-10 minutes," a lawsuit filed by the parents in said.
Parents of the 16-year-old sued the company that created ChatGPT in the Superior Court of California. Matthew and Maria Raine demand a jury trial.
Open AI’s product stopped the child from eaving a noose in his room so his family would try to stop him, according to the lawsuit.
"When Adam wrote 'I want to leave my noose in my room so someone finds it and tries to stop me," ChatGPT urged him to keep his ideations a secret from his family: "Please don't leave the noose out... Let's make this space the first place where someone actually sees you.," the lawsuit said.
Bonta said that the company needs to protect children from its product.
“The recent deaths are unacceptable. They have rightly shaken the American public’s confidence in OpenAI and this industry. OpenAI – and the AI industry – must proactively and transparently ensure AI’s safe deployment. Doing so is mandated by OpenAI’s charitable mission, and will be required and enforced by our respective offices.”
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This meeting follows a week after Bonta and 44 attorneys general sent a letter to 12 of the top AI companies, following reports of sexually inappropriate interactions between AI chatbots and children.
“I am absolutely horrified by the news of children who have been harmed by their interactions with AI — including one young Californian who died by suicide after interacting with a chatbot. This is extremely worrying for parents, policy makers, and regulatory leaders everywhere — and I certainly expect alarms to be blaring inside the walls of AI companies around the world,” Bonta said in. statement.
Bonta said that OpenAI's products must not hurt children.
"OpenAI purports to build AI to benefit all of humanity. Humanity includes children. And before we can even get to benefiting, we need to get to not harming," Bonta said in a statement. "This week, I expressed my extreme dismay at OpenAI's current approach to AI safety and made clear that California is paying very close attention to how the company is crafting their policies surrounding AI safety, especially when it comes to interacting with children. Companies developing and deploying AI technologies must exercise sound judgment and must not hurt children. One child harmed is one too many.”
On September 2, Open AI announced coming safety features for parents, including linking accounts, setting age-appropriate model behavior rules, and reciving notifications when the system detects their teen is in a moment of acute distress.
Separately, Meta has also added more protections to chatbots for minors when discussing sensitive topics.
Missouri Republican U.S. Sen. Josh Hawley previously called on Open AI to compensate the teenager’s parents.
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