A new class action says ChatGPT's Terms of Use are void for every kid who clicked "Continue," and the law it relies on is from 1874. Filed yesterday against OpenAI on behalf of minors who use ChatGPT. Plaintiffs want kids paid a share of OpenAI's equity, measured by how many tokens each child contributed. The theory: California Family Code § 6701 bars minors from making certain contracts, including ones involving personal property not in their possession. Plaintiffs argue that kids' chats, photos, and voice recordings are exactly that property, and that a 13-year-old can't sign it away. The complaint pulls no punches: - “The intimate thoughts, fears, and secrets of a child cannot be scraped from the internet. OpenAI's competitors do not have that information." - “That law has no special carve-out for high-tech companies or billionaires." - It quotes Sam Altman: "People talk about the most personal sh*t in their lives to ChatGPT." - And an OpenAI employee at a 2024 company meeting: "One of the failure modes for AI as an industry is basically people losing trust and comfortability in giving up their data." Plaintiffs’ analogy: "OpenAI took invaluable information from children - their grapes - and turned it into a trillion-dollar company - the wine." Per the complaint, signing up takes a name, a claim to be 13+, and one click. OpenAI says parental consent is required. Nobody contacts the parents. The complaint calls itself "the first to ask courts in this State to apply these laws to an AI company." If it works, every arbitration clause and liability waiver in those terms falls with it.