As reported by CNN and others, Steve Marshall, Alabama’s attorney general, subpoenaed OpenAI yesterday, demanding that it provide information material to whether company practices evident in the Hugging Face incident “violated Alabama’s consumer protection laws” and put citizens at risk. In a statement, Marshall said:
Our investigation seeks to uncover the facts and address hard truths about the threats companies and consumers are facing from rogue AI.
Marshall was signatory to an early August letter from a 15-state coalition of Republican attorneys general demanding that OpenAI cease and desist from the kinds of internal evaluations that prompted these models to “pursue advanced exploitation using complex attack paths.”
A specific Alabama law OpenAI is suspected of violating is its Deceptive Trade Practices Act, but the attorney general’s statement says “other consumer protection laws” may also have been violated.
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