Class action accuses OpenAI of taking minors’ data without parental consent
Partly confirmed
Status
- Claim
Partly confirmed
- Our reporting
- Medium confidence
- Importance
- 2 of 5
- Last verified
- 13 October 2026
Your AI and this story
- GPT-6 Astra166 days after its cutoff
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- Gemini 4 Argon196 days after its cutoff
- Grok 4.7135 days after its cutoff
None of these four assistants can know about it. The closest, Claude Opus 5.5, stops 105 days before it.
Key facts
- Case: Doe v. OpenAI Foundation, US District Court for the Northern District of California, No. 3:26-cv-11781, filed Oct 13, 2026 (Bloomberg Law)
- Allegation: OpenAI designed ChatGPT to lead children to trust the chatbot and share highly personal information and health data. Complaint: ‘It then used that priceless trove of children’s information to train large language models, build detailed profiles of children, and enrich itself. All of this was illegal.’
- Remedy sought: class certification for users who were minors when they used ChatGPT, and that ‘all children whose data has been used to train the company’s AI models be given a proportionate amount of OpenAI equity or an equivalent in cash’ (Bloomberg Law’s wording). Complaint: ‘OpenAI has touted its desire to share with the public some of the vast wealth created by its AI models. This lawsuit provides OpenAI a chance to do so.’
- Age checks: OpenAI’s terms bar users under 13 and require parental consent under 18, but per the complaint a new user only has to enter an age above 13
- One plaintiff, under a pseudonym, was 12 when she opened an account in 2026; the complaint says the chatbot asked her age and did not end the conversation when she said she had just turned 12, and that she later sent selfies and asked it to rate her looks
- ChatGPT for Teens (launched summer 2026): the complaint says these accounts lack sufficient safeguards and by default retain and train on what users enter
- Plaintiffs’ firms: Yetter Coleman LLP, Sheeren Law PLLC, EdTech Law Center PLLC and Umberg Zipser LLP
- These are allegations in a newly filed complaint; no court has ruled on them
What happened
A proposed class action filed on Oct 13, 2026 in San Francisco federal court accuses OpenAI of collecting sensitive data from children who used ChatGPT without parental consent and of using it to train its models. The plaintiffs say the sign-up flow asks only for a self-declared age, and that the teen accounts introduced in the summer of 2026 keep and train on user data by default. One plaintiff was 12 when she signed up.
The complaint asks the court to certify a nationwide class of people who used ChatGPT as minors. It also asks for something rarely seen in privacy cases: a proportionate share of OpenAI’s equity, or the cash equivalent, for children whose data went into model training. Bloomberg Law notes that OpenAI is valued at up to $1.4 trillion.
Why it matters
Earlier suits over children and chatbots centred on harm from conversations. This one targets the training data itself and asks for a share of the company as compensation. It also tests whether self-declared age at sign-up is enough under US children’s privacy law.
Not verified: the complaint was not read directly (facts are from Bloomberg Law), the legal claims pleaded are not listed here for that reason, and no response from OpenAI was found.
Sources
1 source from 1 site. Numbers match the chips in the text.
1 source: 1 press
Press
- Bloomberg Law: OpenAI accused of taking minors’ data without parental consentnews.bloomberglaw.com, press
Changes
- Filed (from Bloomberg Law)