AI’s ‘Big Tobacco’ danger - POLITICO
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About The Author : Aaron Mak
Aaron Mak is a technology reporter at POLITICO. As an undergraduate, he interned at POLITICO Magazine and the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. Aaron later worked as a technology reporter at Slate, where he won a Writers Guild of America award for a feature delving into Asian men’s rights groups on social media. Aaron holds a bachelor’s degree from Yale College and a JD from Yale Law School. In his free time, he likes watching cult classics and listening to cloud rap.
AI’s ‘Big Tobacco’ danger
By AARON MAK
06/03/2026 04:00 PM EDT
James Uthmeier speaks onstage at microphone.
Florida Attorney General James Uthmeier filed a complaint against OpenAI concerning the safety of ChatGPT on Monday. | Dominic Gwinn/Middle East Images/AFP via Getty Images
A deluge of lawsuits accusing social media companies of harming young users is a flashing-red danger sign for the artificial intelligence industry.
Florida Republican Attorney General James Uthmeier sued OpenAI and CEO Sam Altman on Monday, alleging in part that ChatGPT is a dangerous product for users’ mental health and public safety.
The suit is a novel use of product liability law for AI — but it parallels a legal strategy that plaintiffs are wielding in thousands of cases against major social platforms this year. The approach also echoes the wave of litigation by almost every U.S. state against the giant tobacco companies that led to multibillion-dollar settlements and restrictions on cigarette marketing in the 1990s.
A New Mexico jury held Meta liable in March for failing to implement sufficient safeguards against sexual predators, and a jury in California soon after found that Meta and YouTube had intentionally designed their platforms to be addictive.
Uthmeier’s lawsuit now has AI companies worried that social media’s “Big Tobacco” moment is coming for them as well.
“There is concern [among AI companies] about what happens with this product liability approach,” said Michelle Lopes Maldonado, associate director of AI policy at the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation — a think tank whose funders include AI developers like Anthropic and Alphabet. “The possibility of multiplying suits by state attorneys generals could be real.”