A West Virginia lawsuit accuses Snap Inc. of misleading families about Snapchat’s child-safety protections and My AI data practices, putting the company’s engagement and advertising model under legal scrutiny.
Attorney General John B. McCuskey filed the consumer-protection action in Kanawha County Circuit Court on Nov. 5, 2026. The state seeks a permanent injunction, restitution and disgorgement of profits, plus civil penalties of up to $5,000 per violation if a court finds repeated and willful violations. Requested measures include age verification, parental controls, usage limits, crisis-response procedures and tools to detect predators.
The complaint links the alleged risks to product incentives, arguing that Snapchat features encourage prolonged use and that My AI conversations can support ad personalization. The state says children and families face the safety and privacy harms it describes; the allegations have not been tested in court.
The complaint says Snap acknowledged internally in May 2022 that 96.7% of reported accounts did not lead to review. It also says 86.3% of sexual content flagged proactively by automated systems or human detection, without a user report, expired before review. The complaint does not state the period covered by that second figure.
The case cites 15-year-old Bryce Tate, whom the complaint says was targeted in a sextortion scheme that began on Snapchat on Nov. 6, 2025. It says he died three hours after the initial contact. McCuskey’s office said the lawsuit was filed one day before the anniversary of Tate’s death and also cited the 2018 death of Cimarron Thomas following sextortion involving Snapchat.
Snap began a global rollout of My AI on April 19, 2023. The state alleges the chatbot reached children after a short testing period. The complaint says My AI conversations go to OpenAI to generate responses and that conversation content and other information go to Microsoft Advertising for ad selection. Snap announced in September 2023 that Microsoft Advertising would provide sponsored links in My AI.
Snap’s current privacy disclosures say My AI conversations remain until users delete them and that interaction data may help improve products and personalize advertising. The company says advertising partners can receive queries it identifies as showing commercial intent, along with details such as a user’s age range, country, language, operating system and IP address.
Location access is another part of the case. Snap said in a 2023 explanation, “My AI does not collect any new location information from Snapchatters.” Its help page says location a user has shared with Snapchat can reach My AI even in Ghost Mode; the setting changes what friends can see, not what the app receives. The page says users can revoke the app’s location permission or clear My AI data.
In May 2024, the U.K. Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) concluded that Snap’s revised data-protection assessment for My AI met the relevant assessment requirement and that the company had not breached the requirement to consult the regulator. That decision covered those issues, not My AI’s wider data processing. WV News reported that Snap had not responded to its request for comment. The complaint lists no hearing date.
