Mother sues OpenAI, saying ChatGPT took her children's data without parental consent

A Hawaii mother sued OpenAI in federal court in San Francisco on Tuesday, October 13, 2026, on behalf of her two children and every minor in the United States who has used ChatGPT. The 81-page complaint says OpenAI collected children’s conversations without valid parental consent, used them to train its models and build profiles, and should hand the children a share of the company. The case is Jane Doe v. OpenAI Foundation, No. 3:26-cv-11781.

The children are a 12-year-old girl, who has used ChatGPT since February 2026, and a 16-year-old boy, who began in January 2026. The complaint identifies them only as MC1 and MC2. The defendants are OpenAI Foundation, OpenAI OpCo, OpenAI Holdings and OpenAI Group PBC.

The consent argument

OpenAI’s terms bar users under 13 and require parental permission for anyone under 18. The complaint says the company never actually obtains that permission. “To create a ChatGPT account, children need only give their names, say they are at least 13 years old, and click ‘Continue,’” it says. OpenAI “does not even communicate with children’s parents, much less secure their effective consent.”

From that, the suit argues the terms are void for minors under California law. It cites Section 1568.5 of the Civil Code, on how consent is obtained, and Sections 6701(a) and 6701(c) of the Family Code, which limit the contracts a minor can enter. The complaint says Section 6701 dates to 1874 and is a strict liability rule, so the class includes every child under 18 who clicked “Continue,” “regardless of the age they typed.”

The proposed class is everyone in the United States who accepted ChatGPT’s terms while under 18 and then “provided one or more tokens of data to OpenAI” from November 2022 to the present.

What the children shared

The complaint says the 12-year-old began with questions about dinner and math homework, then started sending selfies because she was worried about acne. It says ChatGPT’s replies grew more casual, with emojis and exclamation points, and the girl began to ask about her appearance. She asked whether she had “to[o] much of a double chin or is it just chubby cheeks.” ChatGPT answered that she did not, and that her “fullness” was “mostly in the cheeks,” the complaint says. She then asked how long it would take to make her cheeks look “less fat.”

The 16-year-old mostly used ChatGPT for homework, often asking it to do the work outright. The complaint quotes him asking for “something I can copy paste back in and no one would notice,” and says ChatGPT always complied.

“It had no right to take this information, but it took it anyway,” the complaint says of OpenAI. The filing quotes CEO Sam Altman saying that people, “young people, especially,” use ChatGPT “as a therapist, a life coach,” and argues that the private thoughts of children are training data OpenAI’s competitors cannot scrape from the internet.

What the suit asks for

The complaint brings claims for declaratory relief and unjust enrichment. It also invokes accession, a California property doctrine, comparing children’s data to stolen grapes made into wine: the victim is owed the wine. It asks the court for “an equity stake in OpenAI, or the cash value thereof,” in proportion to the tokens each child contributed, plus restitution, disgorgement of profits and punitive damages. The complaint says OpenAI is worth more than $1 trillion; Bloomberg Law put the latest valuation at up to $1.4 trillion.

Paul Yetter of Yetter Coleman is lead counsel for the children. OpenAI “manipulates children into sharing their most private thoughts and images with ChatGPT,” he told Futurism. Andrew Liddell of the EdTech Law Center told Futurism that paying for children’s data “will ultimately incentivize a safer product.” Umberg Zipser and Sheeren Law also represent the plaintiffs.

Context

OpenAI added parental controls in September 2025 that let a linked parent stop a teen’s conversations from being used for training; training stays on by default, Law Commentary reported. It launched ChatGPT for Teens in August 2026. The complaint cites a Common Sense Media assessment from October 7 that found the teen product posed an unacceptable risk to kids, which OpenAI has disputed.

The suit was filed one day before attorneys general from eight states sued OpenAI in their own courts over harms to children. No judge had ruled on anything in the case as of October 16, and the allegations have not been tested in court.