A coalition of state attorneys general led by New York’s Letitia James served OpenAI with a subpoena on Friday, five days after the company filed a confidential S-1 with the Securities and Exchange Commission. The timing isn’t subtle, and it isn’t supposed to be.

The subpoena, reviewed by The Wall Street Journal, demands records on advertising practices, user engagement and retention, handling of consumer and health data, activities involving minors and seniors, deep-learning models, model behavior including sycophancy, and internal company policies. The Journal describes it as the first coordinated multistate enforcement action targeting an AI platform.

The probe didn’t materialize from nowhere. In December 2025, a coalition of 42 attorneys general signed a letter pressing OpenAI, Meta Platforms, Anthropic, Alphabet’s Google, and xAI to implement safeguards for vulnerable users. Earlier in June, Florida AG James Uthmeier sued OpenAI alleging it knowingly released an unsafe product, and opened a separate criminal investigation tied to ChatGPT’s alleged role in a 2025 mass shooting at Florida State University. Uthmeier said at the time he expected other states to follow. They did.

OpenAI’s response was the institutional minimum. A spokesperson said the company takes the concerns seriously and intends to engage constructively, adding that “AI is a new and powerful technology, and we work every day to safely bring its benefits to people in a responsible way.” ChatGPT now has more than 1 billion monthly active users, per CNBC, which is the scale at which “engaging constructively” becomes a quarterly line item.

The wrongful-death docket is filling in parallel, including a complaint filed Thursday by a Canadian mother. The Associated Press emailed a dozen state AGs on Saturday seeking probe details and received no response, which is itself the message: the coalition wants OpenAI’s bankers reading headlines, not press releases.

Sources