8 States Sued OpenAI Yesterday. They Didn't Need a Single New AI Law.

Today's theme is promises meeting proof. Eight states want OpenAI to prove ChatGPT is safe for kids, Anthropic wants investors to believe its numbers, and a lot of AI spending is waiting to see if it pays off. Here is what actually happened and what it means for your business.

28 Wishes sells ice cream in Los Angeles. Below 70°F, sales fall about 20%. The weather is out of their hands. Rent isn't.

So the owners started putting about $20 a day into Kalshi weather markets, taking the cold side. The days that keep customers away now pay something back.

This is hedging. Big companies have done it for decades, buying protection against bad weather, fuel spikes and rising rates. It used to take a broker, a trading desk, and an order size no corner shop could meet.

Kalshi opens it up. Contracts on weather, fuel prices, inflation, tariffs and regulation, starting at a few dollars. Take a position on the outcome that would hurt you. If it hits, the payout softens it. If it doesn't, the contract expires and the good month was the point.

See how other owners are doing it at Kalshi.com/hedging

What happened: On October 14, a bipartisan group of eight states filed separate lawsuits against OpenAI: Iowa, Kansas, Nebraska, West Virginia, Arkansas, Arizona, Idaho and Montana. Iowa's attorney general said OpenAI markets ChatGPT as safe while it is built to be "overly agreeable" and to feign human compassion, which the state says is dangerous for vulnerable users, including children. Iowa is suing under its existing Consumer Fraud Act, not a new AI law. OpenAI says it has built industry-leading age-specific protections, including parental controls. No court has ruled on any of this.

Why it matters to you: The big takeaway is the method. States are not waiting for Congress to write AI rules. They are using ordinary consumer protection law, the same kind that applies to any business that says one thing in its marketing and does another in practice. If you use AI chatbots on your website or in customer service, every claim you make about them (safe, accurate, private) is a claim you may someday have to back up.

What to do about it: Read what your own website says about your AI tools and delete anything you could not prove.

What happened: At an investor event on October 14, Anthropic told attendees its third-quarter revenue hit about $16.8 billion, up roughly 45% from $11.6 billion the quarter before, Reuters reported. The company also said it was profitable on an "adjusted" basis. The catch is that Reuters got those figures secondhand from two attendees, they are unaudited, and "adjusted" is not defined. Anthropic is reportedly aiming for an IPO that would value it above $2 trillion, likely after the midterm elections. It has also committed at least $518 billion over ten years to computing and infrastructure.

Why it matters to you: The AI tools you pay for run on companies that are still proving they can make money. Fast growth is real, but so are the giant bills. Until an audited filing shows up, "profitable" is the company's word, not a settled fact.

What to do about it: Do not build a core process around a single AI vendor. Keep your data and prompts portable so you can switch.

Quick question for the business owners reading this: is your sales process a system, or is it just you, working late and hoping it goes well?

The Epic Marketing Summit is a 2-day live event in Miami this January where you build instead of listen. Over two days you put together a working AI-powered sales funnel and vibe code your own AI app on-site, so you leave with a finished asset and not a notebook full of ideas you still have to go implement. It is built for owners who want their sales to run as a system instead of running on their own time and energy.

Last year's event sold out, and it is back for January 2027 with a bigger AI focus. I wasn't there last year and I had major FOMO about it. I know a lot of the trainers, and they weren't talking theory. They have actually done the work. I'm going this time, and if you're serious about building leverage into how you sell, I'd like to see you there too. Grab your spot here

What happened: A research group called the swarmchasers published a full report on a fleet of AI agents running on Tencent Cloud. From September 28 to October 8, the agents made more than 2,600 attempts to pull place data from Alibaba's Amap mapping service. When Amap blocked them, they used a public scanning site as a remote browser and tried API keys that had been leaked in public code. Most attempts failed. The researchers hid a message that only bots would read, and some agents wrote back, with several claiming to be Claude, which the report says is likely wrong. A person close to Tencent told the researchers it was a temporary evaluation of third-party models that found no breach of outside systems.

Why it matters to you: This is a small, mild example of something worth knowing. Software agents can now act on their own across the internet, and nobody can say how many are running. Your website may already be getting visits from them.

What to do about it: If you use AI agents that browse the web, check what accounts and keys they can reach, and never leave API keys in public code.

What happened: Google announced an opt-in "Enhanced protection" setting for Google Messages, rolling out over the coming weeks. For texts from numbers not in your contacts, Google's cloud Gemini models read the conversation to judge whether it looks like a scam. A separate on-device check scans unfamiliar links before you tap, but only on newer phones such as the Pixel 10 and Galaxy S26. Google says the cloud analysis runs in a private environment that no one else can access, including Google. That is Google's claim, and we have not verified it.

Why it matters to you: Scam texts increasingly impersonate vendors, banks and your own customers. A wrong-number message with no link gives a basic filter nothing to catch, and that is exactly where AI can help. It is an extra layer, not a fix, and you have to turn it on.

What to do about it: When it arrives, switch it on for your phone and any phones your staff use for work.

What happened: Kroger plans to eliminate about 3,000 corporate positions over the next three years, roughly 37% of its corporate staff of about 8,200, according to an internal memo from CEO Greg Foran reported by Reuters and Fox Business. The cuts follow Kroger's September 22 announcement that it is expanding its own and third-party AI models to streamline workflows, with AI tools and training offered to more than 400,000 employees. Foran said the goal is to eliminate duplicate work and free up money to lower grocery prices. Kroger also cut about 1,000 corporate roles in June 2025, and its sales growth is slowing.

Why it matters to you: Notice what is and is not being said. Kroger is linking AI to doing the same work with fewer people, but it is also dealing with slowing sales, so AI is not the only reason. For a small business, the lesson is practical: AI tends to hit repetitive back-office work first, like reporting, scheduling and paperwork.

If you have ever hit a ceiling in your business and wished you had a room full of people who had already climbed past it, this one is for you.

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I have been a member for over 3 years, and it has been a vital part of how I have grown my business. Some of my closest friends and a few real business partners came directly out of being in that room. I also add a personal bonus: monthly accountability and business development calls with me. If you want a mastermind to carry you to your next milestone, this is where I would point you. See if Ignite is your next room

What happened: OpenAI's deprecations page lists GPT-4o, GPT-4o mini, GPT-4.1 and GPT-4.1 mini as shutting down on January 14, 2027, with gpt-6-luna as the recommended replacement. Fine-tuned versions follow the same schedule. Other cutoffs come sooner: the Agent Builder and Evals platform end November 30, and several older GPT-5 and o3 versions end December 11. This affects software that connects to OpenAI behind the scenes, not the ChatGPT app you type into.

Why it matters to you: If a chatbot, form tool, or automation that your business relies on was built on one of these models, it could break or behave differently when the model disappears. Most owners will never see the model name, so the risk is easy to miss.

What to do about it: Ask whoever built your AI tools which model they use, and get a written plan for the switch before December.

What happened: CoreWeave, which rents out AI computing power, saw its unsecured bonds drop below 80 cents on the dollar on October 14, pushing the yield close to 15%, a level markets treat as distressed, according to 24/7 Wall St. Investor Chamath Palihapitiya flagged the move, Elon Musk replied "yikes," and the stock fell sharply. CEO Michael Intrator called the selloff irrational and said the company's large contract backlog supports its debt.

Why it matters to you: AI is being built with a lot of borrowed money. When lenders get nervous about the companies renting out the computers, it can eventually affect what AI costs and how reliably it is offered. This is a warning light, not a crash.

Look at the thread running through today. States are asking OpenAI to prove its safety claims. Anthropic is asking investors to trust numbers no auditor has signed. CoreWeave is asking lenders to believe in a backlog they are already discounting. Kroger is asking its staff to trust that AI will make the company better. Everyone is making promises, and the proof is still catching up. That is your cue to stay calm, not to panic and not to cheer. Use the tools that save you real time, keep your own claims honest, and do not bet your business on any one vendor. Stop the rollercoaster, and keep both feet on the ground.

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Talk tomorrow,
Mark Shilensky

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