To the maximum extent permitted by law, OpenAI's total liability for any claims arising under these Terms will not exceed the greater of the amount you paid to OpenAI in the past 12 months or $100.
This liability cap means that even if OpenAI's AI outputs cause significant real-world harm — such as incorrect medical, legal, or financial information acted upon in good faith — your maximum legal recovery is effectively capped at $100 for free tier users, which is far below typical actual damages in AI-related harm scenarios.
OpenAI's Terms of Use affect consumers primarily through the default permission for OpenAI to use conversation data — including prompts and AI outputs — to improve its AI models, which means sensitive or personal information shared with ChatGPT may be retained and analyzed beyond the immediate session. Minors under 13 are prohibited from using the services, and those aged 13–17 require verifiable parental consent, but the adequacy of age verification mechanisms is not detailed in the terms themselves. You can opt out of having your conversations used for model training by navigating to your ChatGPT account settings and disabling the 'Improve the model for everyone' toggle.