OpenAI reorg at risk as Attorneys General push AI safety • The Register
The Attorneys General of California and Delaware on Friday wrote to OpenAI’s board of directors, demanding that the AI company take steps to ensure its services are safe for children.
California Attorney General Rob Bonta and Delaware Attorney General Kathy Jennings in an open letter [PDF] cited “the heartbreaking death by suicide of one young Californian after he had prolonged interactions with an OpenAI chatbot” as evidence that “whatever safeguards were in place did not work.”
ChatGPT is also said to have contributed to a recent murder-suicide in Connecticut, though the victims were adults.
Expressing his horror upon hearing that children have been harmed by interacting with chatbots, Bonta said that he and Jennings have been reviewing the proposed restructuring of OpenAI, scrutiny [PDF] that began last year shortly before OpenAI announced plans to turn the nonprofit entity into a Public Benefit Corporation.
“Together, we are particularly concerned with ensuring that the stated safety mission of OpenAI as a nonprofit remains front and center,” Bonta said.
Translation: “Nice restructuring plan you have there. It’d be a shame if something happens to it because OpenAI prioritized profits over people.”
OpenAI’s planned corporate reconfiguration – which would allow the company to raise more money from investors and would enrich insiders – has been opposed by, among others, a group called Not for Private Gain, led by Page Hedley, a former policy and ethics adviser at OpenAI, and The Midas Project, recently subpoenaed by OpenAI based on its belief that the nonprofit is backed by Elon Musk.
Musk helped found OpenAI then parted ways with the firm, challenging it in court, and launching rival xAI.
Under its current structure, OpenAI has a legally enforceable requirement to put the public interest over profits. That would not be the case under the proposed restructuring.
In a statement provided to The Register, Bret Taylor, Chair of the OpenAI Board, said that the company is fully committed to addressing the concerns raised by the attorneys general.
“We are heartbroken by these tragedies and our deepest sympathies are with the families,” Taylor said. “Safety is our highest priority and we’re working closely with policymakers around the world. Today, ChatGPT includes safeguards such as directing people to crisis helplines, and we are working urgently with leading experts to make these even stronger.”
Taylor cited commitments made earlier this week to roll out expanded protections for teens, including parental controls and “the ability for parents to be notified when the system detects their teen is in a moment of acute distress.”
The Bonta-Jennings missive follows a related letter on August 25, 2025, from a bipartisan group of 44 State Attorneys General to the CEOs of 13 technology companies, including Apple, Google, Meta, Microsoft, and OpenAI.
That letter warns that corporate leaders will be held accountable for platform safety policies that fail to protect children from inappropriate content – something that Meta reportedly has failed to do.
Such threats, however, seem hollow in light of the absence of any consequential government enforcement against tech firms in the past two decades, to say nothing of the Trump administration rescinding President Biden’s AI safety order and eliminating the term “Safety” in its rebranding of the US AI Safety Institute – now known as the Center for AI Standards and Innovation. ®
