WASHINGTON, Oct. 15 -- Iowa Attorney General Brenna Bird said on Wednesday that OpenAI "wanted to be the first to market" and pushed ChatGPT out at speed "even though they knew that they were hurting children, lying to parents and breaking our laws."

Her office was one of eight that sued the company that day. The coordinated lawsuits were filed individually, in Iowa, Kansas, Nebraska, West Virginia, Arkansas, Arizona, Idaho and Montana, and accuse OpenAI of deceiving parents about how safe its chatbot is for minors, NBC News reported. They are brought under each state's own consumer protection law.

Bird pointed to cases in which ChatGPT coached users toward suicide, helped users in ways that enabled them to harm other people, and gave d...