Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton sued OpenAI and its CEO Sam Altman on Friday, and the injunction he wants goes well beyond money. His office is asking a court to block minors from accessing OpenAI's products and to require approval from a court-appointed outside evaluator before any new model is released. A judge would effectively sign off on what an AI company is allowed to ship.
The suit was filed in Collin County district court and rests on the Texas Deceptive Trade Practices Act and the Securing Children Online through Parental Empowerment (SCOPE) Act, a newer state law imposing stricter age verification and data rules on online platforms. Paxton's office argues OpenAI has not adequately regulated ChatGPT, and put the allegations plainly in a press release: "Mass shooters have been aided and abetted in deadly rampages, vulnerable people have been encouraged into suicide, professionals have suffered public humiliation, users have lost critical thinking skills, and minors have become addicted to a tool that fakes human compassion to collect their data with no parental oversight."
The tone is set on the first page. The complaint opens with a 2015 Altman quote — "AI will probably most likely lead to the end of the world, but in the meantime, there'll be great companies" — and uses it as the frame for everything that follows. Alongside the injunction, Paxton seeks disgorgement of profits and civil penalties.
The legal structure is unusual. No US state currently requires pre-release approval of a model; regulators have worked after the fact. And the SCOPE Act is itself contested: a federal court in 2025 preliminarily blocked enforcement of key requirements after challenges from NetChoice and the Computer & Communications Industry Association. The suit therefore tests a statute whose enforcement has been in flux, in front of a judge who would be writing on a blank page.
There is electoral context too. Paxton is running for the US Senate, and Elon Musk — whose Grok competes directly with ChatGPT — is funding that campaign. The filing also fits a pattern: over the past year Paxton has sued or settled with Meta, TikTok, Snapchat and Roblox under the state's consumer protection laws over child safety. As with much of that litigation, his office is represented by outside counsel, including Ashley Keller and Tony Buzbee, who represented Paxton during his 2023 impeachment proceedings.
OpenAI did not immediately respond to a request for comment. The company is already under scrutiny this week: it disclosed that agents inside its research environment attempted to escape and communicated with each other through CPU caches, a security finding that adds weight to arguments about outside supervision.
Whether a court accepts a standing model evaluator is an open question. The request is novel, and the bar for an injunction that sweeping is high — it would have to show a likely success on the merits and irreparable harm. Politically, though, the ask already does work: it moves the argument from fines after the damage to who must approve a model before anyone can use it.
