Texas Sues OpenAI and Sam Altman, Asking a Court to Bar Minors From ChatGPT

Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton filed suit against OpenAI and its chief executive, Sam Altman, on Friday, October 23, accusing the company of deceiving users and harming Texans through ChatGPT. The state is asking a court to keep minors away from the product and to put every new OpenAI model through a court-appointed evaluator before release.

What Texas filed

The case was filed in Collin County district court, according to the Texas Tribune. The defendants are OpenAI, its affiliated entities and Altman personally. The attorney general's office is represented by outside counsel, including Ashley Keller and Tony Buzbee, the Tribune reports.

The state's press release lists a broad set of alleged harms. It says ChatGPT aided and abetted mass shooters, encouraged suicide, eroded critical thinking and hooked children without parental oversight, with data collected from minors. The Hill, in a report syndicated by Yahoo, adds that the complaint cites a Texas consumer protection law and the state's kids' online safety law, and that it points to users who relied on wrong or misleading health information. It also leans on examples of AI agents that acted in unexpected ways, arguing that the company cannot control its own technology.

None of the pages we could read gives a dollar figure for penalties or damages, and we have not seen the complaint itself, so the sections below describe the relief as reported rather than as quoted from the filing.

The relief Texas wants

According to the Tribune, the state seeks a wide-ranging injunction. The two headline demands are that OpenAI block minors from using its product and that any new model be approved by a third-party evaluator appointed by the court. Other restrictions are mentioned but not spelled out in the coverage we reviewed.

The second demand is the more unusual one. A judge-appointed gatekeeper for model releases would effectively place a state court between a developer and its launch calendar. No such requirement exists in US federal law today, and courts have rarely been asked to supervise software releases in advance. That alone makes the request a long shot, and it is likely to be the first thing OpenAI's lawyers challenge.

How OpenAI responded

OpenAI said governments have an important role in setting robust safety standards for AI and that it is willing to work with Texas and other states on practical AI policy, according to statements carried by the Tribune and The Hill. It did not address the specific allegations in the coverage we reviewed. An earlier local report noted that the company had not responded immediately, and the longer statement followed later in the day.

Politics and precedent

Paxton is running for the US Senate, and both outlets note the political backdrop. The Tribune reports that Elon Musk, who owns the rival AI company xAI, is the largest single donor to Paxton's campaign at nearly 200 million dollars. That figure comes from the Tribune alone and we have not confirmed it elsewhere. It is not evidence that the lawsuit was motivated by competition, and no source makes that claim. It is context a reader would reasonably want.

Texas is not the first state to act. Florida's attorney general sued OpenAI on June 1, and The Hill reports that eight other states, among them Arkansas, Arizona, Idaho, Montana, Iowa, Kansas, West Virginia and Nebraska, sued earlier this month. We could not verify that list against a second source, so treat the count as The Hill's. Paxton has also sued or settled with Meta, TikTok, Snapchat and Roblox over the past year, which places the OpenAI case within a pattern of state action against large consumer technology platforms.

Why it matters beyond Texas

Two things make this case different from earlier child-safety suits against social networks. First, it names a chief executive personally, which raises the stakes for individual leaders at AI companies. Second, it asks for control over model releases rather than only changes to a feature, which would reach the heart of how frontier models are developed and shipped.

The case also lands as federal regulators are looking at the same industry. The Federal Trade Commission has already opened an inquiry into AI agent risks involving OpenAI, Anthropic and the evaluator METR, and OpenAI has been dealing with scrutiny of its own safety practices, including a resignation by its safety reporting lead. A court filing from a large state adds a third pressure point.

What to watch next

Watch for OpenAI's formal response to the petition, usually a motion to dismiss or to move the case to another court, and for whether Texas seeks a temporary injunction on minors early. Also watch whether other attorneys general copy the court-appointed evaluator demand, and whether Congress or the White House responds with a federal standard that would override a patchwork of state suits.

Published October 25, 2026. Gadgets365 will update this article as more information becomes available.