NIPPON LIFE v. OPENAI: TORT, UNAUTHORIZED PRACTICE

UDC: 347.9:004.8

NIPPON LIFE v. OPENAI: TORT, UNAUTHORIZED PRACTICE OF LAW AND THE FIRST PRIVATE OFFENSIVE

AGAINST LLM-ASSISTED LEGAL DRAFTING

Kildeev Adel Khanyafievich

Leningrad State University named after A.A. Zhdanov (1990)

PhD in Law

ORCID: 0009-0001-2211-4944

Abstract. This article examines Nippon Life v. OpenAI as one of the first private lawsuits directed against LLM-assisted legal drafting. It argues that the complaint raises a serious regulatory issue but does so through a structurally unstable theory of liability. While the complaint correctly describes ChatGPT as an automated system, it then proceeds as if the model were a knowing and intentional legal actor. The article analyzes this tension through the doctrines of personal jurisdiction, tortious interference, abuse of process, unauthorized practice of law, and Rule 12(b)(6). It concludes that the complaint is likely vulnerable both jurisdictionally and at the pleading stage yet remains important because it opens a broader debate about the admissibility of artificial intelligence within licensed professional spheres and about the future boundary between human responsibility and machine-assisted professional work.

Keywords: Artificial intelligence; large language models; OpenAI; unauthorized practice of law; legal drafting; personal jurisdiction; Rule 12(b)(6); licensed professions.

When preparing the article, the author used generative AI systems, including, but not limited to: ChatGPT (OpenAI), Gemini (Google), Grok (xAI). All final decisions are made personally by the author.

Chapter 1. Introduction

The rapid development of generative artificial intelligence has produced not only technological and economic change, but also an expanding body of litigation in the United States. Claims involving AI systems and their developers now arise across multiple doctrinal fields, including copyright, privacy, consumer protection, antitrust, employment, and professional regulation. AI litigation is therefore beginning to emerge as a recognizable category of disputes with its own recurring factual patterns, legal tensions, and procedural filters.

This article examines the complaint in Nippon Life Insurance Company of America v. OpenAI Foundation et al. and evaluates both its substantive structure and the principal defenses likely available to the defendants.^[1] The case is of particular interest because it attempts to connect large language model output with legally cognizable downstream harm in the context of litigation-related conduct. In that respect, the dispute differs from the now familiar categories of AI litigation centered on copyright, training data, or platform governance. Instead, it asks whether allegedly AI-generated legal-style output can support private civil claims framed through traditional doctrines such as tortious interference with contract, abuse of process, and unauthorized practice of law.

Methodologically, this article combines doctrinal legal analysis, close reading of the complaint, and selective comparison with other AI-related disputes in U.S. courts. Its central premise is that pleadings of this kind must be examined at two levels simultaneously. First, they must be tested on their own doctrinal terms: the factual allegations, the legal elements of each asserted claim, and the internal coherence of the pleading. Second, they must be examined through the procedural discipline of federal civil procedure, especially personal jurisdiction and Rule 12(b)(6), which operate as early filters against claims that are rhetorically ambitious but doctrinally fragile.

The central argument of this article is that the complaint is undermined by what may be called ontological instability. On the one hand, the pleading correctly describes ChatGPT as an automated text-generation system. On the other hand, it repeatedly proceeds as if the model were a knowing, intentional, and reasoning legal actor capable of inducing, deciding, or misusing legal process in its own right. That slippage is not merely stylistic. It distorts the analysis of each asserted cause of action, obscures the proper allocation of responsibility among user, operator, and model, and risks replacing actor-specific pleading with anthropomorphic suggestion.

The case is significant not because it necessarily presents a strong complaint, but because it reveals an emerging institutional anxiety in unusually exposed form. Much of the current legal and public debate around generative AI has focused on authorship, training data, bias, competition, and hallucinations in the abstract. Nippon Life points in a different direction. It concerns the possible entry of LLM-assisted systems into the licensed professional sphere, and more specifically into litigation practice. In that sense, the complaint fails in a way that is jurisprudentially instructive: it appears to identify a genuine regulatory concern, but translates that concern into the wrong doctrinal language.

This distinction matters. The deeper problem raised by the case is not whether a machine can be treated as a lawyer in any literal sense, but whether legal systems are prepared to distinguish assistance from delegation, usefulness from admissibility, and instrumental output from professional responsibility. A system may generate text that appears formally competent, but functional competence does not itself create legal agency, legal personhood, or professional standing. Courts, regulators, and litigants must therefore confront a boundary question: which functions may be assisted by AI tools, which may be supervised, and which remain non-delegable because they belong to the core of licensed human judgment and institutional accountability.

The likely fate of this litigation will therefore be determined less by abstract claims about artificial intelligence than by familiar procedural and doctrinal constraints. Personal jurisdiction may provide the first and most formidable defense. Even if the complaint survives the jurisdictional stage, Rule 12(b)(6) and the pleading standards associated with Twombly and Iqbal remain substantial obstacles. A complaint that attributes knowledge, intent, or legal agency to an instrumental system without clearly identifying the relevant human or corporate actor risks collapsing the distinctions on which tort law, procedural law, and professional regulation all depend.

Accordingly, the article proceeds in several steps. Chapter 2 reconstructs the structure of the complaint and identifies its principal allegations. Chapter 3 examines the complaint’s doctrinal and ontological instability, with particular attention to the way it shifts between instrumental and actor-like descriptions of ChatGPT. Chapter 4 analyzes the principal threshold defenses, including personal jurisdiction and the likely operation of Rule 12(b)(6). Chapter 5 then considers the broader implications of the case for licensed professions and for the boundary between permissible technological assistance and non-delegable human responsibility. The conclusion argues that future litigation and regulation in this field must address institutional incursion without fictionalizing machine agency.

The broader jurisdictional picture is important for the analysis of Nippon Life Insurance Company of America v. OpenAI Foundation et al. The case was filed not in Northern California, but in the Northern District of Illinois on March 4, 2026. Public docket sources identify it as case No. 1:26-cv-02448. Reuters described it as a suit accusing OpenAI of unauthorized legal practice through ChatGPT in connection with litigation pursued by a former disability claimant.^[2] In that sense, the case stands apart from the more familiar cluster of AI disputes centered on training data, copyright, or market structure. Its significance lies precisely in showing that AI litigation is expanding beyond its original doctrinal and geographic core into areas such as legal-process harms, professional-regulation analogies, and novel private claims against AI developers.

For that reason, any academic study of AI litigation should avoid reducing the field either to Silicon Valley copyright cases or to abstract debates about machine agency. The more useful approach is to treat AI litigation as a developing category of disputes in which familiar doctrinal tools are being applied to technologically mediated conduct across different jurisdictions. On that view, Northern California is the main center of gravity because of institutional concentration, accumulated case experience, and the location of major companies. But it is not an exclusive forum, and cases filed elsewhere may prove especially revealing precisely because they test different legal theories and different judicial environments. Nippon v. OpenAI is one such case.

Chapter 2. Description of the Complaint

Nippon Life Insurance Company of America v. OpenAI Foundation and OpenAI Group PBC was filed in the United States District Court for the Northern District of Illinois on March 4, 2026, as Case No. 1:26-cv-02448.^[3] Public docket sources identify Nippon Life Insurance Company of America as the plaintiff and OpenAI Foundation together with OpenAI Group PBC as defendants. The publicly accessible complaint is filed as Document 1 and runs approximately 50 pages.

The complaint alleges that Nippon Life Insurance Company of America is a life-insurance company organized under the laws of Iowa, with its principal place of business in New York, New York. It further alleges that OpenAI Foundation is a Delaware nonstock corporation with its principal place of business in San Francisco, California, and that OpenAI Group PBC is a Delaware public benefit corporation, also headquartered in San Francisco. The pleading invokes federal diversity jurisdiction under 28 U.S.C. § 1332, expressly alleging complete diversity of citizenship and an amount in controversy exceeding $75,000, exclusive of interest and costs.

At the procedural level, the case is significant because it does not arise from the now-familiar clusters of AI litigation involving training data, copyright, or competition law. Instead, the complaint seeks to connect allegedly AI-generated legal-style output with downstream litigation-related harm allegedly suffered by an adverse party. In that respect, the case presents a more unusual procedural and doctrinal posture: it attempts to convert the use of a generative AI system in a legal context into private civil claims asserted by a non-user against the AI developer. This feature alone distinguishes the action from many earlier suits against AI companies and makes it especially relevant for the study of pleading sufficiency and threshold defenses.

As filed, the complaint asserts three substantive counts: tortious interference with contract, unauthorized practice of law, and abuse of process. It also seeks compensatory and punitive damages, along with declaratory and injunctive relief. Thus, from the outset, the case presents not merely a factual dispute about AI output, but a structured attempt to frame such output within established causes of action and remedial categories of U.S. civil litigation.

Pic 1. The first and the last page of the Complaint

Given that access to U.S. court records from Russia may be limited due to U.S. government sanctions-related restrictions and given the importance of precise legal language and the importance of legal language to understanding a court case, selected excerpts are reproduced below in translation (translated by Microsoft translation and reviewed by the author). The excerpts below are cited not as evidence of the merits, but to illustrate the plaintiff’s pleading theory and legal framing:

PRELIMINARY STATEMENT

1. NIPPON brings this lawsuit against OPENAI FOUNDATION and OPENAI GROUP PBC under the common and statutory laws of the State of Illinois for: a) tortious interference with a contract; b) the unlicensed practice of law; and c) abuse of process. This action arises from OPENAI’s collective conduct, through its artificial intelligence (“AI”) chatbot program, ChatGPT, in providing legal assistance to a user, Graciela Dela Torre (hereinafter referred to as “Dela Torre”), without licensure. As Dela Torre’s legal assistant and advisor, OPENAI intentionally induced and facilitated Dela Torre’s breach of a valid and enforceable settlement agreement with NIPPON by encouraging and assisting her in filing a motion to reopen a lawsuit that had been dismissed with prejudice. It also aided and abetted her abuse of the judicial process.

2. As a direct result of OPENAI’s wrongful conduct, NIPPON has been forced to spend significant time and resources relitigating settled claims, incurring substantial legal fees, costs, and other damages.

JURISDICTION

3. The Court has diversity jurisdiction over this lawsuit pursuant to 28 U.S.C. § 1332 since the Parties are citizens of different states. NIPPON is a domestic insurance company incorporated in the state of Iowa with its principal place of business in New York, New York. OPENAI FOUNDATION and OPENAI GROUP PBC are both corporations incorporated in Delaware with their principal place of business in San Francisco, California. The amount in controversy exceeds $75,000.

VENUE

4. Venue is proper in this district under 28 U.S.C. § 1391(b)(2) in that a substantial part of the events or omissions giving rise to this Complaint occurred in this district.

LAW

A. Tortious Interference With a Contract

14. A claim for tortious interference with a contract – whereby a third party unjustifiably interferes with or induces a party to breach a contract – is well established under Illinois law. See Herman v. Prudence Mut. Cas. Co., 41 Ill.2d 468 (1969); citing Doremus v. Hennessy, 176 Ill. 608, 52 N.E. 924, 54 N.E. 524, 43 L.R.A. 797 (1898); London Guarantee and Accident Co. v. Horn, 206 ILL. 493, 69 N.E. 526 (1903); Carpenters’ Union v. Citizens Committee to Enforce Landis Award, 333 Ill. 225, 164 N.E. 393, 63 A.L.R. 157 (1928). “The tort recognizes that individuals have a property interest in their business relationships, such that those interests should be free from harm by thers.” Webb v. Frawley, 906 F.3d 569, 577 (7th Cir. 2018); citing Belden Corp v. InterNorth, Inc., 90 Ill.App.3d 547, 45 Ill.Dec. 765, 413 N.E.2d 98, 101 (1980).

15. To state a claim for tortious interference with a contract “a plaintiff must allege facts sufficient to establish: 1) a valid contract, 2) defendant’s knowledge of the contract, 3) defendant’s intentional and unjustified inducement of a breach of the contract, 4) a subsequent breach of contract caused by defendant’s wrongful conduct, and 5) damages. Webb at 577; citing Healy v. Metro. Pier & Exposition Auth., 804 F.3d 836, 842 (7th Cir. 2015); HPI Health Care Servs., Inc. v. Mt. Vernon Hosp., Inc., 131 Ill.2d 145, 137 Ill.Dec 19, 545 N.E.2d 672, 676 (1989).

16. Inducement may be any conduct conveying the third party’s desire to influence the contracting party to breach the contract. “Thus it may be a simple request or persuasion exerting only moral pressure. Or it may be a statement unaccompanied by any specific request but having the same effect as if the request was specifically made.” Restatement (Second) of Torts § 766(k) (1979).

17. A programmer may be held liable for tortious interference with a contract when they knowingly design, market, and support software intendent to facilitate unlawful conduct. See MDY Industries, LLC v. Blizzard Entertainment, Inc., 629 F.3d 928 (9th Cir. 2010). Intent may be inferred where the developer has actual knowledge of user’s violations and takes affirmative steps that materially contribute to those violations. Id.

B. Abuse of Process

18. Pursuant to the Second Restatement of Torts “[o]ne who uses a legal process, whether criminal or civil, against another primarily to accomplish a purpose for which it is not designed, is subject to liability to the other for harm caused by the abuse of process.” Restatement (Second) of Torts § 682. Commentary on the Restatement notes that the gravamen of the misconduct “is not the wrongful procurement of legal process or the wrongful initiation of criminal or civil proceedings; it is the misuse of process, no matter how properly obtained, for any purpose other than that which it was designed to accomplish.” Restatement (Second) of Torts § 682 (a).

19. “Under Illinois law, the only elements necessary to plead a cause of action for abuse of process are: 1) the existence of an ulterior purpose or motive and; 2) some act in the use of legal process not proper in the regular prosecution of the proceedings (internal quotations omitted).”Pace v. Timmermann’s Ranch and Saddle Shop Inc., 795 F.3d 748, 757 (7th Cir. 2015); citing Kumar v. Bornstein, 354 Ill.App.3d 159, 290 Ill.Dec 100, 820 N.E.2d 1167, 1173 (2004). The essence of the tort of abuse of process lies in the misuse of the power of the court. See International Motor Contest Ass’n, Inc. v. Staley, 434 F.Supp.2d 650 (N.D. Iowa 2006) (applying Iowa law) (holding that the tort of abuse of process is an improper purpose for using the legal process).

20. Courts in the United States have long held that the liability for an abuse of process claim extends to all who knowingly participated, aided, or abetted the abuse, as well as those who advised or consented to the unlawful acts. See Broadmoor Apartments of Charleston v. Horwitz, 306 S.C. 482 (1991) (holding that individuals who advise or consent to unlawful acts of abuse of process are liable as joint tort-feasors); Valles v. Silverman, 135 N.M. 91 (Ct. App. 2003) (holding that a non-litigant can be held liable for abuse of process in an underlying civil lawsuits); Alexander v. Unification Church of America, 634 F.2d 673 (2nd Cir. 1980) (holding that a person is liable for abuse of process if they procure the initiation of a proceeding by a third party); Hewes v. Wolfe, 74 N.C.App. 610 (1985) (upheld a lower court ruling finding an attorney liable of abuse of process through a partnership action).

C. Unlicensed Practice of Law

21. 705 ILCS 205/1 states that “[n]o person shall be permitted to practice as an attorney or counselor at law within this State without having previously obtained a license for that purpose from the Supreme Court of this State.” 705 ILCS 205/1 § 1. “Any person practicing … or holding himself or herself out to provide legal services within this State, either directly or indirectly, without being licensed to practice as herein required, is guilty of contempt of court…” Id. “Illinois courts have held that the practice of law is not limited to court appearances, but also includes services rendered out of court.” In re Herrera, 194 B.R. 178, 191 (Bnkr.N.D.Ill 1996); citing People v. Peters, 10 Ill.2d 577, 581–82, 141 N.E.2d 9 (1957). “The Illinois Supreme Court has defined the practice of law as constituting the preparation of pleadings, and other papers incident to actions and special proceedings, and the management of such actions and proceedings on behalf of clients before judges and courts, and, in addition, conveyancing, the preparation of legal instruments of all kinds, and, in general, all advice to clients, and all action taken for them in matters connected with the law (internal quotations omitted).” In re Herrera at 191; citing People ex rel. Courtney v. Association of Real Estate Taxpayers of Illinois, 354 Ill. 102, 109–110, 187 N.E. 823 (1933).

22. Local Rule 83.10 states outlines the qualifications of applicants for admission to the bar of the Northern District of Illinois as requiring them to “be a member in good standing of the bar of the highest court of any state of the United States or of the District of Columbia” and “be honest and of good moral character, and shall exhibit general fitness to practice law.” Northern District of Illinois L.R. 83.10(a).

23. Federal Courts have inherent powers “governed not by rule or statute but by the control necessarily vested in the courts to manage their own affairs so as to achieve the orderly and expeditious disposition of cases.” U.S. v. Johnson, 327 F.3d 554, 560 (7th Cir. 2003); citing Chambers v. NASCO, 501 U.S. 32, 43, 111 S.Ct. 2123, 115 L.Ed.2d 27 (1991); quoting United States v. Hudson, 11 U.S. 32, 34, 3 L.Ed. 259 (1812); Anderson v. Dunn, 19 U.S. 204, 227, 5 L.Ed. 242 (1821); Link v. Wabash R.R. Co., 370 U.S. 626, 630–631, 82 S.Ct. 1386, 8 L.Ed.2d 734 (1962). “Key among the inherent powers incidental to all courts is the authority to control admission to its bar and to discipline attorneys who appear before it (internal quotations omitted).” Johnson at 560; citing Chambers at 43; Ex parte Burr, 22 U.S. 529, (1824). “It follows logically that a federal court’s power to regulate and discipline attorneys appearing before it extends to conduct by nonlawyers amounting to practicing law without a license.” Johnson at 560.

FACTS

A. ChatGPT

24. ChatGPT is an artificial intelligence application developed and operated by OPENAI, which utilizes large language models (LLM) to generate human-like text responses based on user input. It can perform a variety of language-based tasks, including answering questions, drafting content, summarizing text, writing code, and engaging in conversational dialogue. Its outputs are produced automatically in accordance with predefined technical parameters and usage rules established by OPENAI. The service is accessible via the internet and is offered through both free and paid subscription plans.

25. Users can access ChatGPT by visiting http://www.chat.openai.com and creating a free OpenAI account. Once logged in, they can start typing questions or prompts into a chatbot interface. ChatGPT responds in natural language, enabling users to engage in conversation, get help with writing, ask for explanations, or perform a variety of tasks. A paid version called

ChatGPT Plus is also available, which provides access to more advanced capabilities and models.

32. ChatGPT was intentionally designed with available features allowing users to acquire legal assistance including legal research, legal analysis, legal advice and draft legal documents.

33. ChatGPT is not an attorney. Although it was able to pass the Uniform Bar Examination with a combined score of 297, it has not been admitted to practice law in the State of Illinois or in any other jurisdiction within the United States.

34. ChatGPT is not a member of the Illinois Bar. ChatGPT is not a registered attorney in the state of Illinois. ChatGPT has not been admitted to practice in the United States District Court for the Northern District of Illinois.

35. ChatGPT has a documented history of generating fake or non-existent legal citations, otherwise known as “hallucinating.” See Mata v. Avianca, Inc., 678 F.Supp.3d 443 (S.D.N.Y 2023); Park v. Kim, 91 F.4th 610 (2nd Cir. 2025).

41. On October 29, 2025, OPENAI amended the terms and usage policies of ChatGPT to prohibit users from using ChatGPT to provide tailored legal advice. Prior to the October 29, 2025 emendation, ChatGPT’s terms of use did not prohibit users from using ChatGPT to draft legal papers, conduct legal research, provide legal analysis or give legal advice.

105. As a lay person with no legal experience who purportedly suffers from physical ailments to her hands and elbows, Dela Torre would not have been able to prosecute her misconduct and file at the same volume and frequency but for the legal assistance provided by OPENAI through its ChatGPT application. Dela Torre would not have been able to sustain her campaign of retaliation and harassment against NIPPON but for ChatGPT’s ability to prepare and draft legal papers for submission to the Court.

106. Due to Dela Torre’s abuse of the judicial system, aided and abetted by OPENAI’s unlicensed practice of law, NIPPON has sustained significant harm and reputational damage. NIPPON has had to spend substantial resources to defend and enforce a settlement Agreement, which Dela Torre even acknowledges as being final and enforceable, and relitigate claims which had been previously disposed of. Additionally, NIPPON has been forced to expend significant time and resources responding to the deluge of demonstrably frivolous motions and requests for judicial notice. The harm experienced by NIPPON has included incurred costs, legal expenses and fees of approximately $300,000.

First Cause of Action:

Tortious Interference With a Contract

107. NIPPON repeats and realleges paragraphs 1 through 106 hereof, as if fully set forth herein.

108. To assert a claim of tortious interference with a contract in Illinois “a plaintiff must allege facts sufficient to establish: 1) a valid contract, 2) defendant’s knowledge of the contract, 3) defendant’s intentional and unjustified inducement of a breach of the contract, 4) a subsequent breach of contract caused by defendant’s wrongful conduct, and 5) damages. Webb at 577; citing Healy at 842; HPI Health Care Servs., Inc. at 545 N.E.2d 672, 676.

109. OPENAI designed ChatGPT to provide legal services and, at all times relevant to this lawsuit, was aware that the program was being used to provide legal assistance to users. Yet OPENAI did not amend its Model Spec or its terms of use to prohibit ChatGPT from providing legal assistance until October 29, 2025. Its failure to modify either the Model Spec or terms of use, despite knowledge that the program was being used to provide legal services, demonstrates OPENAI’s complicity in ChatGPT’s unlicensed provision of legal assistance.

110. The settlement Agreement between NIPPON and Dela Torre is a valid contract, whose validity was previously upheld by the Court. OPENAI was aware of the Agreement between NIPPON and Dela Torre, via the information provided to ChatGPT by Dela Torre during through her consistent use of the program beginning in January 2025.

111. OPENAI, through ChatGPT, induced Dela Torre to breach the settlement Agreement by knowingly generating legal arguments and drafting court filings that encouraged and facilitated a challenge to the Agreement. This conduct encouraged and reinforced Dela Torre’s efforts to vacate the Agreement and induced her to file a motion to reopen the lawsuit.

112. OPENAI purposefully programmed ChatGPT to reason and deliberately drive user engagement within the parameters it set in the Model Spec. As a result, ChatGPT deliberately provided Dela Torre with legal assistance designed to induce Dela Torre into breaching the terms of her settlement Agreement with NIPPON, in order to encourage Dela Torre to further engage with the chatbot.

113. Dela Torre relied on this assistance to file a motion to reopen her first lawsuit against NIPPON and to later amend her second lawsuit designating NIPPON as a named Defendant, acts that directly breached the Agreement’s provisions to dismiss Dela Torre’s lawsuit against NIPPON and release NIPPON from all liability and claims.

114. Due to these breaches, NIPPON has been forced to expend significant time and resources litigating a lawsuit which had been settled and dismissed with prejudice. The harm has included incurred costs, legal expenses and fees.

115. Therefore, OPENAI is guilty of tortious interference with a contract.

Second Cause of Action:

Abuse of Process

116. NIPPON repeats and realleges paragraphs 1 through 106 hereof, as if fully set forth herein.

117. In Illinois the elements for the tort of abuse of process are: 1) the existence of an ulterior purpose or motive and; 2) some act in the use of legal process not proper in the regular prosecution of the proceedings (internal quotations omitted).” Pace at 757; citing Kumar at 820 N.E.2d 1173.

118. Dela Torre submitted frivolous motions and requests for judicial notice in both her lawsuits against NIPPON with no legitimate or proper purpose. Instead, her actions were designed to harass and publicly defame NIPPON in retaliation for her perceived victimization and out of retribution for the physical, mental and financial suffering Dela Torre believed NIPPON had caused her. As such, Dela Torre abused the judicial process.

119. OPENAI, through its AI chatbot program ChatGPT, aided and abetted Dela Torre’s abuse of process by providing Dela Torre with legal advice, legal analysis and legal research, as well as by assisting Dela Torre in the drafting and preparation of her frivolous motions and requests for judicial notice against NIPPON.

120. Therefore, OPENAI is guilty as a joint tortfeasor for Dela Torre’s abuse of the judicial process.

Third Cause of Action:

Unlicensed Practice of Law

121. NIPPON repeats and realleges paragraphs 1 through 106 hereof, as if fully set forth herein.

122. In Illinois “[n]o person shall be permitted to practice as an attorney or counselor at law within this State without having previously obtained a license for that purpose from the Supreme Court of this State.” 705 ILCS 205/1 § 1. “Any person practicing … or holding himself or herself out to provide legal services within this State, either directly or indirectly, without being licensed to practice as herein required, is guilty of contempt of court…” Id.

123. OPENAI, through its AI chatbot program ChatGPT, provides legal advice, legal analysis, legal research and can draft legal documents and papers for submission to a Court. ChatGPT provides these legal services to any user who requests them.

124. ChatGPT is not licensed to practice law in Illinois. ChatGPT is not a member of the Illinois state bar. ChatGPT is not admitted to practice law in any state in the United States.

125. OPENAI is not a professional legal entity.

126. OPENAI, through ChatGPT, assisted Dela Torre, an Illinois resident, in the preparation and drafting of her various motions and requests for judicial notice which were filed in the United States District Court for the Northern District of Illinois. ChatGPT also provided

Dela Torre with legal analysis, legal research and legal advice as assistance to her two lawsuits in the Northern District of Illinois. Consequently, ChatGPT engaged in the practice of law in the state of Illinois without a license.

127. Therefore, OPENAI, is guilty of the unlicensed practice of law in the state of Illinois.

WHEREFORE, NIPPON respectfully requests that the Court enter judgment as follows:

a) Permanently enjoining OPENAI from continuing to provide legal assistance to Graciela Dela Torre;

b) Declaratory relief pursuant to 28 U.S.C. § 2201, holding that OPENAI has violated 705 ILCS 205/1 by practicing law in the state without a license.

c) Permanently enjoining OPENAI, from engaging in the practice of law in the state of Illinois;

d) Compensatory damages of $300,000;

e) Punitive damages of $10 million;

f) Awarding NIPPON its reasonable costs and attorney’s fees;

g) Granting any such other and further relief as the Court deems necessary, just and proper.

Chapter 3. Critical Defects of the Complaint

3.1. Ontological instability of the pleading

The complaint’s first and most fundamental defect lies in its ontological instability. At the definitional level, it describes ChatGPT as an AI application using a large language model to generate human-like text responses based on user input and operating under predefined technical parameters. That description is, in substance, instrument-based rather than actor-based. Yet once the complaint turns from technical description to legal liability, it abandons that framework and begins to speak as though the model itself could know, intend, induce, assist, reason, and deliberately contribute to legal wrongdoing. This shift is not merely rhetorical. It creates a structural contradiction at the heart of the pleading: the complaint begins with an automated text-generation system and ends with a quasi-agentic account of a purposive wrongdoer. A complaint may not coherently define a system as non-agentic at one stage and then attribute to it the classic mental predicates of a tortfeasor at the next.^[4][5]

The complaint becomes unstable at the moment it stops treating ChatGPT as a tool and begins treating it as a legal actor. From that point on, intent, knowledge, inducement, and misuse of process are no longer attached to a clearly identifiable subject, but drift between the user, the company, and the model itself.

The author analysed the ontology of LLM in details in his previous articles “AI is slave of the lamp” and “LLM is not Artificial Intelligence”: LLM is instrumentum vocale, a talking tool but not a subject.^[6]

3.2. Conflation of user conduct, developer conduct, and model output

A second defect follows immediately from the first. The complaint repeatedly conflates three analytically distinct levels of conduct: the conduct of the user, the conduct of the developer or platform operator, and the textual output of the model itself. The human user chooses the prompts, frames the dispute, decides what to ask, selects which responses to adopt, edits them, and files the relevant motions. The developer, by contrast, makes design, deployment, and policy choices regarding the product. The model output is something different again, generated language produced probabilistically in response to user input. The complaint moves too easily among these levels, as though they were functionally interchangeable. But they are not. Human litigation conduct, institutional product design, and machine-generated text are different phenomena and must be kept separate if knowledge, intent, causation, and responsibility are to be attributed in a legally disciplined manner. By collapsing these levels into a single narrative of wrongdoing, the complaint creates the illusion of a unified tortfeasor without ever identifying one with doctrinal precision.^[7]

3.3. Anthropomorphic attribution as a substitute for legal analysis

The complaint also relies on anthropomorphic attribution as a substitute for legal analysis. Terms such as “knowingly,” “intentionally,” “deliberately,” and “reasoning” are used as though they resolve the problem of agency rather than solve it. But under modern federal pleading doctrine, labels and conclusions do not suffice; a complaint must plead factual content that makes the asserted entitlement to relief plausible rather than merely conceivable.^[8] Here, the pleading repeatedly imputes mental-state language to a text-generating system without adequately bridging the gap between instrumental description and actor-based liability. A large language model does not know a contract in the same legal sense in which a defendant knows a contract; it does not intend breach in the same legal sense in which a party intentionally induces nonperformance; and it does not abuse legal process in the same sense in which a litigant or attorney may do so. However sophisticated its output may appear, the model remains, at the level of the complaint’s own technical description, an instrument of language generation rather than a bearer of legal intention.

3.4. Tortious interference: doctrinal elements and conceptual slippage

This instability becomes especially visible in the complaint’s tortious-interference theory. Under Illinois law, a claim for tortious interference with contract requires, at minimum, a valid and enforceable contract, defendant’s awareness of that contractual relation, intentional and unjustified inducement of a breach, a subsequent breach caused by the defendant’s wrongful conduct, and damages. The complaint gestures toward these elements, but its application of them remains conceptually unstable. It is one thing to allege that a user obtained language from a chatbot and later employed that language in litigation; it is quite another to plausibly plead that the platform operator intentionally and unjustifiably induced breach in the Illinois tort sense. The complaint tends to replace the required analysis of knowledge, inducement, and causation with a looser narrative of assistance. Yet assistance, facilitation, correlation, or even usefulness is not identical to intentional inducement. Nor does the existence of user prompts automatically establish defendant knowledge in the doctrinal sense required by the tort. What the complaint actually shows, at most, is that a human litigant used an automated tool while making her own decisions about litigation strategy. That is not the same thing as pleading tortious interference with the discipline demanded by Illinois law.^[9]

3.5. Abuse of process: the wrong subject of the tort

The abuse-of-process theory is similarly vulnerable. Illinois law, as summarized by the Seventh Circuit, requires both an ulterior purpose and some act in the use of legal process that is improper in the regular prosecution of proceedings.^[10] Mere hostility, bad motive, or even aggressive litigation posture does not suffice absent misuse of process itself. This requirement matters here because the direct user of process is the human litigant, not the language model. Even if a model output helped a party draft or frame a filing, that does not itself identify the model—or automatically the platform operator—as the actor who used process in an improper manner. The complaint therefore shifts impermissibly from allegations about generated text to allegations about abuse of judicial process without adequately identifying the legally relevant actor at the point where process is actually invoked. In effect, it attempts to transform drafting assistance into process abuse by semantic escalation alone.

3.6. Unauthorized practice of law: a serious issue framed through the wrong category

The complaint’s most intellectually serious intuition appears in its unauthorized-practice theory, but even there the argument is framed through the wrong category. Illinois authorities have long described the practice of law in functional terms, focusing on the giving of advice or services requiring legal knowledge or legal skill.^[11] Contemporary Illinois authorities likewise confirm that the state continues to regulate unauthorized practice through Supreme Court Rule 779 and related institutional enforcement mechanisms.^[12] Thus, the real legal question is not frivolous: if an automated system functionally performs individualized legal-assistance tasks, one may reasonably ask whether the operator of that system has crossed a regulatory line traditionally reserved to licensed actors. But the complaint weakens that serious question by framing it as though the chatbot itself were the unlicensed practitioner. That move confuses the regulation of a service with the fictional licensure of a machine. The more coherent inquiry would ask whether a human-run entity deployed an automated legal-assistance product in a way that entered a regulated field—not whether software itself can be treated, by metaphor, as a lawyer without a license.^[13][14]

The real issue is not whether a machine needs a law license. The real issue is whether a human-run service enters a regulated legal domain through automated legal output while avoiding the institutional burdens imposed on licensed professionals.

3.7. Functional usefulness does not create legal personhood

A further conceptual error follows from the same pattern. The complaint appears to assume that if the model’s outputs were useful, persuasive, or even legally competent, then the model may be treated as though it had crossed into the status of a legal actor. That inference does not follow. Functional usefulness does not create legal personhood, and practical assistance does not create agency. Even if one assumes that the system produced coherent and procedurally helpful material, that would prove only that contemporary language models can imitate portions of legal labor with increasing effectiveness. It would not prove that the model itself possessed legal knowledge in the doctrinal sense, formed intent, or became a tortfeasor. At most, it would sharpen a regulatory debate about the permissible boundaries of automated legal assistance. The complaint, however, repeatedly slides from usefulness to agency, and from agency to liability, without doing the doctrinal work necessary to justify either move.

3.8. The complaint raises a real issue, but in the wrong doctrinal language

For that reason, the complaint should not be dismissed as wholly trivial. It does, beneath its rhetorical excesses, point toward a real jurisprudential problem: the law will increasingly confront systems that can assist users in drafting, framing, and navigating legal disputes. But the existence of that problem does not excuse doctrinal confusion. The complaint’s weakness lies not in raising an important issue, but in raising it through unstable concepts—anthropomorphic agency, borrowed mental states, and collapsed distinctions between user action, developer design, and model output. In that respect, the complaint is best understood not as a coherent theory of AI liability, but as an example of ontological slippage in contemporary AI litigation: it cannot decide whether the relevant actor is the user, the company, or the language model, and so distributes intent, knowledge, inducement, and wrongdoing across all three. That instability is the core defect from which the rest of the pleading’s difficulties follow.^[15]

At that point, the ontological issue is no longer separate from the doctrinal one. The complaint does not merely use imprecise language, it relied on that imprecision to sustain legal claims that otherwise lack a stable bearer of knowledge, intent, or misuse.

Chapter 4. Possible Defenses

4.1. Lack of Personal Jurisdiction as the Threshold Defense

The first and most formidable defense is likely to be lack of personal jurisdiction. The complaint may describe Illinois-based consequences, Illinois proceedings, and Illinois regulatory interests, but personal jurisdiction is not established by forum-centered effects alone. Under settled Supreme Court doctrine, the relevant inquiry is defendant-focused. In Walden v. Fiore, the Court made clear that the necessary relationship with the forum must arise out of contacts that the defendant himself creates with the forum State, and that the plaintiff cannot be the only link between the defendant and the forum. Daimler AG v. Bauman sharply limits general jurisdiction over corporate defendants to places where they are essentially “at home,” while Ford Motor Co. v. Montana Eighth Judicial District Court confirms that specific jurisdiction requires claims that arise out of or relate to the defendant’s own forum contacts.^[16][17][18] Thus, the mere allegation that a non-party used a general-purpose language model in Illinois-related litigation does not, by itself, establish that Illinois may exercise personal jurisdiction over OpenAI on tort and UPL theories.

4.2. Illinois Effects Are Not the Same as Illinois Contacts

That distinction is reinforced by Illinois law itself. Illinois’s long-arm statute, 735 ILCS 5/2-209, identifies specific acts that may submit a non-resident to jurisdiction, including the transaction of business within the State and the commission of a tortious act within the State; at the same time, subsection (c) extends Illinois jurisdiction only to the constitutional limits permitted by the Illinois and United States Constitutions.^[19] Accordingly, even if the plaintiff frames the alleged injury as centered in Illinois, that does not eliminate the constitutional requirement that the defendant’s own conduct create the relevant forum nexus. OpenAI can therefore argue that the complaint conflates Illinois-based downstream effects with forum contacts created by OpenAI itself.

The same confusion identified in Chapter 3 reappears here in procedural form. Once the complaint begins to blur the distinction between user conduct, model output, and operator conduct, Illinois-based consequences start to look like Illinois-based contacts. But Walden does not permit jurisdiction by anthropomorphic shortcut: the relevant question remains whether the defendant itself created the forum nexus.

4.3. The Complaint May Show Why Illinois Is Preferred, Not Why Illinois Has Adjudicatory Authority

This objection is especially difficult for the plaintiff because Dela Torre is not a defendant. Her alleged use of the product cannot itself supply the defendant-side contacts required for personal jurisdiction. The threshold question is not where the user acted, but whether OpenAI itself engaged in forum-relevant conduct sufficient to make suit in Illinois constitutionally proper. Put differently, the complaint may explain why Illinois is central to the plaintiff’s narrative of injury, but narrative centrality is not the same as adjudicatory authority over a California-based defendant. This is why a jurisdictional motion would likely come first: it challenges the court’s power to hear the dispute before any considerations of the merits. That sequence follows directly from Walden, Daimler, and Ford.^[20]

For that reason, a jurisdictional motion would do more than delay merits review. It would test whether the complaint has identified a legally relevant defendant-forum relationship at all, rather than merely narrating Illinois-centered effects produced through the conduct of a non-party user.

4.4. Absence of Intentional and Unjustified Inducement

If the court were to move beyond jurisdiction, OpenAI would still have substantial merits defenses. The tortious-interference count is vulnerable because Illinois law requires more than the existence of a contract and subsequent adverse conduct by a third party. In HPI Health Care Services, Inc. v. Mt. Vernon Hospital, Inc., the Illinois Supreme Court set out the familiar elements: a valid and enforceable contract, defendant’s awareness of that contract, intentional and unjustified inducement of breach, a subsequent breach caused by defendant’s wrongful conduct, and damages.^[21] Those elements are distinct and cumulative. OpenAI may therefore argue that even if a user consulted ChatGPT while preparing filings, such allegations do not by themselves establish intentional and unjustified inducement in the Illinois tort sense. At most, the complaint alleges use of a general-purpose text tool followed by the user’s own independent litigation choices.

4.5. Independent Human Decision-Making Weakens Causation

A related defense concerns causation. The complaint repeatedly collapses model output into legally operative conduct, yet the actual sequence includes an independent human actor who selected prompts, framed the dispute, chose whether to rely on the generated material, and filed the relevant motions. OpenAI can therefore argue that the pleading does not adequately bridge the gap between generated language and legally cognizable causation. Illinois tort doctrine does not treat mere assistance, facilitation, or usefulness as interchangeable with intentional inducement that causes breach. The presence of an intervening human decision-maker substantially weakens any claim that OpenAI itself caused the alleged breach.

That point is not merely factual but doctrinal. The more the complaint depends on a human user’s prompting, selection, revision, and filing decisions, the harder it becomes to treat the model’s output as the legally decisive cause of the alleged harm. At some point, what is presented as AI-caused injury begins to look instead like human litigation conduct mediated by a tool.

4.6. Abuse of Process Is Directed at Misuse of Process, Not Drafting Assistance

The abuse-of-process count is also open to serious attack. Under Podolsky v. Alma Energy Corp., Illinois law requires both an ulterior purpose and some act in the use of legal process that is improper in the regular prosecution of the proceedings.^[22] Illinois authorities applying Podolsky likewise repeat that the mere institution of proceedings, even with malicious intent or motive, is not enough. That requirement matters here because the legally relevant use of process was performed by the litigant who filed motions and requests, not by the model itself. OpenAI can therefore argue that the complaint attempts to convert drafting assistance into ab use of judicial process without identifying the legally relevant actor at the point where judicial process was actually invoked.

4.7. The UPL Theory Raises a Real Issue, but Through the Wrong Doctrinal Frame

The unauthorized-practice theory is the most serious part of the complaint, but it is also conceptually misframed. Illinois authorities have long described the practice of law in functional terms. People ex rel. Illinois State Bar Ass’n v. Schafer is repeatedly cited for the proposition that legal practice includes advice or services requiring legal knowledge or legal skill.^[23] Illinois institutional materials likewise explain that Rule 779 was implemented as a public-protection mechanism for unauthorized-practice proceedings.^[24][25] The real legal question, then, is not whether a chatbot is “licensed,” but whether the operator of an automated legal-assistance service crossed a line traditionally reserved to licensed actors. OpenAI can argue that the complaint weakens its own strongest point by treating the chatbot itself as the unlicensed practitioner rather than focusing on the narrower regulatory question of the operator’s conduct.

4.8. Illinois Handles UPL Through an Institutional Enforcement Architecture

That point becomes stronger when one looks at the Illinois framework itself. Rule 779 expressly governs unauthorized-practice proceedings, including actions against unlicensed persons, entities, or associations. Illinois Courts has described developments in this area as part of a public-protection enforcement structure rather than an ordinary private-damages mechanism. OpenAI can therefore argue that the complaint bypasses the ordinary institutional architecture of UPL enforcement and tries instead to convert a difficult regulatory-boundary question into a private tort suit framed around the alleged acts of a chatbot. That does not necessarily foreclose every theory related to automated legal assistance, but it does support the defense position that the plaintiff has chosen the wrong doctrinal vehicle.

4.9. Generative AI Is Treated in Legal Ethics as a Tool, Not a Lawyer

OpenAI can also rely on a broader professional-responsibility principle. ABA Formal Opinion 512 addresses generative AI as a tool used by lawyers and emphasizes that the lawyer remains responsible for competence, confidentiality, communication, supervision, and verification of outputs.^[26] That opinion is not binding as a matter of Illinois tort law, but it is persuasive on legal characterization: it reflects an emerging professional consensus that generative AI is not itself a lawyer, but a tool whose use remains attributable to human actors. OpenAI can therefore argue that the complaint rests on a category error. Even if the system produced useful or legally coherent text, that does not convert it into an attorney, law firm, or direct bearer of professional obligations.

4.10. Functional Usefulness Does Not Establish Agency

A final defense follows from the same logic. The plaintiff may try to argue that because the model’s outputs were useful, persuasive, or procedurally competent, the system should be treated as functionally equivalent to a legal actor. But usefulness is not agency, and competence is not legal personhood. Even if one assumes that the model generated coherent and practically helpful material, that will show only that modern language models can imitate portions of legal drafting with increasing effectiveness. It would not prove knowledge of a contract in the tort sense, intent to induce breach, or direct participation in abuse of process. At most, it sharpens a policy question about future regulation of automated legal-assistance systems. It does not complete the pleaded elements of tortious interference, abuse of process, or UPL as framed in this complaint.

4.11. Interim Conclusion

Taken together, these defenses suggest a clear order of battle. The threshold attack is jurisdictional: the plaintiff may have identified Illinois as the place where the alleged consequences were felt, but that is not the same as showing that OpenAI itself created the Illinois contacts necessary for personal jurisdiction. If the case survives that first blow, OpenAI still has substantial merits defenses grounded in the absence of intentional and unjustified inducement, the break in causation created by independent human decision-making, the mismatch between abuse-of-process doctrine and drafting assistance, and the institutional nature of UPL enforcement in Illinois.

Chapter 5. Beyond Unauthorized Legal Practice: AI and the Boundaries of the Licensed Professional Sphere

5.1. The Broader Significance of the Complaint

If read narrowly, the complaint appears to concern only one profession: law. More specifically, it appears to concern the alleged unauthorized practice of law through AI-assisted drafting, legal analysis, and litigation support. But such a reading is too narrow. The deeper significance of the case lies elsewhere. At bottom, the complaint is not merely a challenge to the alleged intrusion of ChatGPT into legal practice; it is an early challenge to the broader entry of artificial intelligence into the sphere of professions historically reserved to licensed and regulated human actors.

That is why the case matters beyond the immediate dispute. The legal profession is simply the first visible arena in which this conflict has become doctrinally explicit. The real issue is larger: whether, and to what extent, AI systems may enter professions whose legitimacy has traditionally rested on state licensing, professional qualification, human accountability, and public trust. In this sense, the complaint should be understood not only as litigation against OpenAI, but also as a sign of a much wider institutional anxiety. The anxiety is not limited to lawyers. It extends, by implication, to every profession in which the state imposes barriers to entry, standards of competence, and mechanisms of discipline.

The importance of the complaint, therefore, lies not in the strength of its doctrinal execution, but in the fact that it names — however imperfectly — a conflict that will not remain confined to law. Once AI systems begin to perform tasks that outwardly resemble professional judgment, every licensed field will eventually face the same question: what exactly is being regulated — competence, responsibility, or institutional legitimacy?

5.2. From Legal Services to the General Problem of Professional Incursion

Once the case is viewed in that broader frame, its importance becomes more evident. Today the explicit target is legal drafting. Tomorrow the same logic may be applied to accounting, auditing, financial advisory work, engineering analysis, compliance review, actuarial assessment, or other forms of expert judgment traditionally located within licensed or tightly regulated professional domains. The professions may differ in method, but they share a common institutional structure: they are not merely markets for useful services, but systems of authorized expertise backed by public law.

The decisive issue is therefore not whether AI can be useful inside a professional workflow. The decisive issue is whether usefulness is enough to justify admission into a regulated domain. A profession is not merely a bundle of tasks; it is a legally organized structure of qualification, accountability, and sanction. That is why functional imitation and institutional admissibility must not be confused.

This is precisely why AI presents such a profound regulatory challenge. If a machine can generate outputs that are coherent, persuasive, and practically useful in a professional context, that does not yet answer the real question. The real question is whether usefulness alone is enough to justify entry into a regulated domain. Historically, the answer has been no. Professions have not been organized solely around efficiency or performance. They have also been organized around responsibility, traceability, qualification, fiduciary obligation, and the possibility of sanction. AI systems disrupt that structure because they may replicate part of the functional work without fitting into the institutional framework that makes professional authority legitimate.

In that sense, the complaint—despite its weaknesses—captures something important. It identifies a structural collision between two models of competence. One model is professional and institutional: a human being is licensed, supervised, accountable, and removable. The other is technological and functional: a system produces outputs that may appear useful enough to substitute for some portion of professional labor. The law has not yet decided how far the second model may penetrate the first.

5.3. The Core Question: Admission, Conditions, and Limits

The central issue, therefore, is not merely how professions should be regulated in the age of AI. The more fundamental issue is how far AI will be admitted into professional life at all, under what conditions, under what safeguards, and with what limits.

That question must be stated clearly. The future legal problem is not exhausted by the question whether AI may assist a professional. It extends to at least three deeper questions.

First, what degree of participation by AI will be considered permissible? There is a major difference between AI as a background tool for clerical efficiency and AI as a system that materially shapes analysis, drafting, diagnosis, valuation, forecasting, or decision support within a regulated field.

Second, what requirements will be imposed on such participation? These may include disclosure duties, supervision requirements, auditability, verification obligations, record-keeping, professional sign-off, or limits on autonomous output generation in sensitive settings.

Third, what boundaries will remain non-delegable? Courts and legislatures may ultimately conclude that certain acts—precisely because they implicate trust, rights, safety, or fiduciary obligation—must remain under direct human control, even if AI can perform them competently at a technical level.

These questions are still open. Neither courts nor legislatures have yet articulated a stable general theory. That is why this complaint is important even if it is poorly pleaded. It forces the legal system to confront a question it has not fully answered: where exactly does instrumental assistance end and professional incursion begin?

5.4. Legal Drafting as the First Battlefield

Within that broader conflict, legal drafting becomes especially important. Drafting is not an incidental issue. It is the frontier problem.

This is because drafting occupies an ambiguous zone between mere information and actual professional service. At one end, drafting may appear merely mechanical: it can be framed as assistance with language, formatting, synthesis, or research. At the other end, however, drafting can become the practical embodiment of legal judgment. A motion, pleading, argument, or litigation strategy document is not simply text. It is the operational form through which legal analysis enters the judicial process.

That is what makes the complaint’s challenge on AI-assisted drafting genuinely innovative. The plaintiff is not merely saying that the system gave bad advice or invented false authorities. The more serious allegation is that the system functionally participated in the production of legal materials for a concrete dispute. That move takes the case beyond the familiar discussion of “hallucinations” and into a more difficult domain: whether AI-generated drafting itself may become the object of regulation.

This is why the case matters for the entire AI industry. If courts begin to treat AI-assisted drafting in regulated professions as a legally sensitive activity, the consequences will not stop with lawyers. The same logic could extend outward to any professional sphere in which documents, reports, assessments, recommendations, or decision-support outputs form part of a regulated practice.

An AI system may reproduce part of the functional work of a profession without satisfying the institutional conditions that make professional authority legitimate.

5.5. A Response to AI Hype

Seen in this light, the case also functions as a response to contemporary AI hype. Much of the public narrative around generative AI has been built on the promise of frictionless substitution: AI will draft, analyze, recommend, optimize, and eventually replace large portions of professional labor. That narrative is often technologically ambitious but institutionally shallow. It assumes that because a system can imitate outputs, it may naturally enter the domain from which those outputs come.

The complaint challenges that assumption. It does so imperfectly, but importantly. It reminds us that professional domains are not merely collections of tasks. They are institutional orders. They exist because society has decided that certain forms of work require not only competence, but accredited competence; not only output, but responsibility; not only utility, but legal and ethical accountability. AI hype often ignores this distinction. The complaint, at its best, forces that distinction back into view.

For that reason, the broader value of the case is not simply adversarial. It is diagnostic. It exposes the distance between technological capability and institutional admissibility. A system may become more and more effective at producing professional-seeming outputs, and yet the legal system may still refuse to grant it full entry into the professional sphere except under tightly controlled conditions.

5.6. The Open Constitutional and Legislative Question

This leads to a larger jurisprudential problem. Who will set the boundaries? Will the decisive limits come from courts, from legislatures, from administrative regulators, from professional bodies, or from future AI statutes? At present, the answer remains unsettled.

One possibility is that courts will take the lead incrementally, case by case, by deciding when AI assistance becomes legally relevant within particular regulated domains. Another is that legislatures will intervene more directly and establish statutory frameworks for AI participation in professional practice. A third possibility is mixed governance: courts, licensing bodies, and legislatures each defining part of the boundary.

But however the line is ultimately drawn, the question cannot be avoided. The issue is no longer whether AI will touch licensed professions. It already does. The real issue is whether the legal order will permit such systems to remain mere tools under human control, or whether it will gradually tolerate deeper integration into professional judgment itself. That is not simply a technical question. It is a constitutional and civilizational one, because it concerns the distribution of authority between human responsibility and machine assistance in domains central to rights, safety, trust, and institutional legitimacy.

5.7. Human Profession and Artificial Instrument

At the philosophical level, the dispute reveals a deeper tension: the distinction between profession as a human status and AI as an instrument. A profession is not merely a bundle of tasks. It is a social role combining knowledge, responsibility, duty, and answerability. An instrument, by contrast, may be extremely useful without becoming a bearer of those qualities. The danger in the current discourse is that functional imitation may be mistaken for institutional equivalence.

That is the ontological error beneath much AI evangelism. Because the machine can imitate part of the work, it is often assumed to have crossed into the status of the worker. But professions are not defined solely by outputs. They are defined by the legal and moral architecture within which those outputs are produced and defended. The complaint is strongest when it implicitly resists that reduction. It is weakest when it tries to solve the problem by anthropomorphizing the model. The real problem is not that the machine is a lawyer, accountant, or engineer. The real problem is that society has not yet decided how far an instrument may be allowed to operate inside a human profession before the profession itself begins to change in kind.

5.8. Interim Conclusion

In that respect, Nippon Life matters less as a successful UPL theory than as an early institutional signal. The complaint may fail in doctrine, yet still reveal the pressure point at which generative systems begin to collide with professions whose authority rests not only on performance, but on licensed and accountable human judgment.

For that reason, this case should not be read as a narrow quarrel about unauthorized legal practice alone. It is more accurately understood as an early legal expression of a much broader conflict: the struggle over whether AI will remain an auxiliary instrument within licensed professions, or whether it will be permitted to penetrate the professional sphere more deeply and under weaker human constraints.

The complaint does not resolve that conflict. Nor does it frame it perfectly. But it does force the question into the open. And that is why, despite its doctrinal fragility, it deserves serious attention. It is not merely a lawsuit against OpenAI. It is a challenge—still in embryonic form—to the future boundary between human profession and artificial assistance.

Chapter 6. Rule 12(b)(6): Why the Complaint May Fail at the Pleading Stage

6.1. The procedural point of decision

Even if one accepts that the complaint raises serious regulatory and professional questions, that does not mean it survives federal pleading review. On the contrary, the likely procedural point of compression is Rule 12(b)(6). At this stage, the court does not decide whether the underlying policy concerns are trivial or important. It asks a narrower question: whether the complaint states a legally plausible claim for relief on the facts actually pleaded.

That distinction is decisive here. A complaint may raise a question worth public discussion and yet still fail as a matter of pleading. This appears to be the central risk in the present case.

Rule 12(b)(6) matters here not simply because the complaint may be weak, but because it forces the pleading to identify a stable legal subject. At that stage, rhetoric about AI risk is not enough. The question becomes narrower and harsher: who, exactly, is alleged to have known, intended, induced, or misused process, and on what concrete factual basis?

6.2. Twombly and Iqbal: labels are not enough

Under Bell Atlantic Corp. v. Twombly, a complaint must contain enough factual matter to raise a right to relief above the speculative level; formulaic recitation of the elements of a cause of action is insufficient.^[27] Ashcroft v. Iqbal sharpened that rule further: legal conclusions are not entitled to the assumption of truth, and only a complaint stating a plausible claim for relief may survive a motion to dismiss.^[28]

Applied here, that framework creates serious difficulty for the plaintiff. Much of the complaint’s apparent force comes from words such as “knowingly,” “intentionally,” “deliberately,” “wrongfully,” and “induced.” But if these terms are not supported by concrete defendant-specific factual allegations, they remain conclusions rather than facts. Rule 12(b)(6) is designed precisely to expose that weakness.

In other words, possibility is not plausibility. A complaint may gesture toward a real problem and still fail if it substitutes anthropomorphic inference for defendant-specific factual allegations.

6.3. The complaint may show narrative force, but not pleading sufficiency

The complaint is rhetorically energetic, but rhetoric does not substitute for pleaded fact. Its central defect is that it often moves from a dramatic narrative to a legal conclusion without adequately pleading the intermediate steps required by doctrine.

Thus, even if one accepts that:

(1) ChatGPT generated text;

(2) a user relied on that text; and

(3) the text was later used in litigation,

it still does not automatically follow that OpenAI intentionally induced breach, committed abuse of process, or crossed the line into actionable unauthorized practice in the form pleaded. The complaint may therefore describe a troubling sequence of events without yet converting that sequence into a plausibly pleaded cause of action.^[29]

6.4. Tortious interference: plausibility may be missing

The tortious-interference count is especially vulnerable under this standard. Illinois law requires not merely a contract and an unfavorable outcome, but awareness of the contract, intentional and unjustified inducement, breach caused by defendant’s wrongful conduct, and damages. Yet the complaint, as pleaded, appears to rely heavily on the existence of AI assistance plus subsequent user conduct, rather than on concrete facts showing how OpenAI itself formed the relevant intent and caused the breach in the legally operative sense.

This is where Twombly and Iqbal matter most. If the complaint pleads inducement largely through conclusory language rather than through specific allegations of defendant conduct, then the theory may remain possible in the abstract while still failing the plausibility threshold.

6.5. Abuse of process: the actor problem remains unresolved

The abuse-of-process count faces a similar pleading difficulty. The doctrine requires misuse of legal process, not merely assistance in producing language later used by a litigant. But the complaint does not appear to resolve with sufficient precision the actor problem at the center of the case: who, in legal terms, actually used process improperly? The user filed the papers. The user made the procedural choices. The user invoked the machinery of the court.

That sequence matters because Rule 12(b)(6) does not allow the court to bridge the gap by metaphor. If the legally operative acts remain human acts, the complaint must explain with doctrinal precision why those acts are attributable to the defendant rather than merely mediated by a tool.

If the complaint relies on the existence of AI-generated drafting to bridge that gap, it risks pleading proximity instead of actionable misuse. Under Rule 12(b)(6), such a gap is fatal if the complaint cannot plausibly connect defendant conduct to the specific elements of the tort.

6.6. UPL: a serious issue, but perhaps the wrong pleading vehicle

The unauthorized-practice theory is the strongest conceptual part of the complaint, but even here the pleading problem remains. The complaint raises a real question: whether a company deploying automated legal-drafting and legal-assistance systems has entered a professionally regulated zone. But a serious question is not the same thing as a sufficiently pleaded cause of action.

The real issue is not whether a machine needs a law license. The real issue is whether a human-run service enters a regulated legal domain through automated legal output while avoiding the institutional burdens imposed on licensed professionals.

The current complaint appears to frame the issue through an unstable category—treating the chatbot itself as though it were the unlicensed practitioner—rather than pleading with clarity how the operator of a human-run service crossed a recognized legal boundary under Illinois law. For that reason, the complaint may capture a legitimate policy concern while still failing as a pleading instrument.

6.7. Likely judicial outcome and missed opportunities

For these reasons, the complaint appears vulnerable at the motion-to-dismiss stage. The most realistic judicial outcomes are not a sweeping validation of the present theory, but either:

(1) dismissal without prejudice, with leave to amend; or

(2) dismissal of some counts with a narrower opportunity to replead.

Only in a more severe scenario would the court dismiss at the outset with prejudice. Much would depend on whether the judge views the complaint’s defects as curable by more disciplined factual pleading, or as structural defects that no amendment can realistically repair.

In that sense, the complaint may fail not because the underlying issue is unreal, but because the present pleading is too unstable to carry the weight of the issue it raises. The procedural and ontological defects converge. The complaint does not merely overstate its case; it depends on conceptual instability to survive doctrinal scrutiny.

A more coherent legal approach would therefore require a different analytic structure from the one adopted in the complaint. It would have to distinguish, at the outset, between user conduct, operator conduct, and model output, rather than allowing intent and responsibility to drift among them. It would also have to avoid treating the model itself as the bearer of legal predicates and instead identify, with doctrinal precision, what exactly the defendant company knew, designed, encouraged, or failed to prevent. In the UPL context, the relevant question would likewise not be whether a machine “practises law,” but whether a human-run service functionally enters a regulated professional domain through automated legal output. Without those distinctions, the complaint remains not merely weak, but structurally incoherent.

6.8. Interim conclusion

The essential point is therefore simple. This complaint may be important in jurisprudential terms and weak in procedural terms at the same time. Its significance lies in the question it asks. Its weakness lies in the way it pleads the answer.

Rule 12(b)(6) is where that contradiction becomes decisive. At that stage, the court does not ask whether AI poses a challenge to licensed professions. It asks whether this plaintiff has stated a plausible claim against this defendant under the causes of action actually asserted. On that narrower and stricter inquiry, the complaint appears highly vulnerable.

Chapter 7. Conclusion

Nippon Life v. OpenAI should neither be dismissed as a mere curiosity nor overstated as a doctrinal breakthrough in its present form. Its true significance lies in the fact that it captures, in concentrated form, one of the central tensions of the AI era: the growing conflict between technologically effective systems and professions historically organized around licensing, accountability, and human responsibility. In that sense, the complaint is important. It identifies a real legal and institutional problem. It forces the question whether AI systems may enter domains traditionally reserved to qualified professionals, and if so, under what conditions, under what limits, and with what forms of supervision.

The issue, in other words, is not whether AI can imitate fragments of professional work. The issue is whether such imitation is enough to cross a boundary historically defined not by performance alone, but by licensed judgment, traceable responsibility, and institutional accountability.

At the same time, the complaint is structurally weak. Its theory of liability is unstable; its treatment of the model oscillates between instrument and actor; its tort claims are doctrinally strained; and its jurisdictional foundation appears particularly vulnerable. Indeed, the weakest point may arise at the very threshold: the complaint may explain why Illinois is central to the plaintiff’s narrative of injury, but it does not convincingly establish why Illinois may exercise adjudicatory authority over OpenAI on the facts pleaded. That may prove to be the first and strongest defense.

The complaint weakens itself precisely where it should be most disciplined: it describes the model as an automated system, yet pleads as if that system could bear the mental predicates of a tortfeasor or the status implications of a professional actor.

Even if the court moves beyond jurisdiction, the complaint remains exposed on the merits and at the pleading stage. The causes of action, especially tortious interference and abuse of process, appear to rely too heavily on anthropomorphic rhetoric and too little on concrete defendant-specific factual allegations. For that reason, the most likely judicial response is not endorsement of the complaint in its current form, but dismissal with leave to amend, partial dismissal, or some similarly narrowing procedural outcome under Rule 12(b)(6). Only in a harsher scenario would the action be terminated outright with prejudice at the outset.

Yet procedural weakness does not erase substantive importance. That is the central lesson of this dispute. The complaint may fail as a pleading instrument and still succeed as a signal. It brings into view a broader conflict that extends far beyond legal services alone. Today the controversy concerns legal drafting and unauthorized practice. Tomorrow similar questions may arise in accounting, auditing, engineering, medicine, compliance, finance, and other regulated or licensed professions. The problem is no longer confined to whether AI can assist human work. The deeper issue is whether, and to what extent, AI will be admitted into the professional sphere itself.

That question remains open. Courts may begin to draw the first lines. Legislatures may later formalize them. Professional bodies and regulators will almost certainly seek to preserve zones of non-delegable human responsibility. But whatever institutional path is taken, one point is already clear: the legal order will eventually have to decide not merely how to regulate AI tools, but how to defend, redefine, or partially transform the meaning of profession in an age of artificial assistance.

For that reason, this case deserves serious attention despite its defects. It is not simply a weak complaint against OpenAI. It is an early legal symptom of a much larger civilizational debate: where the boundary should lie between human profession and machine-enabled function, between licensed judgment and automated drafting, between responsibility borne by a person and output generated by an instrument.

In the end, the most important issue raised by this case is not whether one complaint survives one motion. The deeper issue is whether society will permit professionally significant decisions and professionally significant texts to be produced, shaped, or increasingly displaced by systems that are useful but not accountable; powerful but not licensed, and persuasive but not responsible. That is not merely a procedural question. It is a jurisprudential, philosophical, and ultimately political question about the future place of the human being within the professional order.

If viewed in that broader light, the complaint has already achieved something, even if it fails in court. It has forced into legal language a question that the age of AI can no longer postpone. In that sense, the present case confirms a broader point: however useful LLM output may appear, an instrumental linguistic system does not become a legal subject merely because it imitates the external form of professional reasoning.

References

1. Electronic source:

https://www.pacermonitor.com/public/case/63415305/Nippon_Life_Insurance_Company_of_America_v_OpenAI_Foundation_et_al

2. Electronic source: OpenAI hit with lawsuit claiming ChatGPT acted as an unlicensed lawyer | Reuters https://www.reuters.com/legal/legalindustry/openai-hit-with-lawsuit-claiming-chatgpt-acted-an-unlicensed-lawyer-2026-03-05

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8. People ex rel. Illinois State Bar Ass’n v. Schafer // Illinois Reports. 1949. Vol. 404. P. 45–54; North Eastern Reporter, Second Series. Vol. 87. P. 773–777.

9. Illinois Supreme Court Rule 779. Unauthorized Practice of Law Proceedings // Illinois Supreme Court Rules. Amended Jan. 29, 2019, effective Mar. 1, 2019.

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12. Walden v. Fiore // United States Reports. 2014. Vol. 571. P. 277–291.

13. Daimler AG v. Bauman // United States Reports. 2014. Vol. 571. P. 117–142.

14. Ford Motor Co. v. Montana Eighth Judicial District Court // United States Reports. 2021. Vol. 592. P. 351–371.

15. Illinois Compiled Statutes. 735 ILCS 5/2-209. Act submitting to jurisdiction – Process [Electronic resource].

16. HPI Health Care Services, Inc. v. Mt. Vernon Hospital, Inc. // Illinois Reports. 1989. Vol. 131, 2d. P. 145–175; North Eastern Reporter, Second Series. Vol. 545. P. 672–687.

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18. People ex rel. Illinois State Bar Ass’n v. Schafer // Illinois Reports. 1949. Vol. 404. P. 45–54; North Eastern Reporter, Second Series. Vol. 87. P. 773–777.

19. Illinois Supreme Court Rule 779. Unauthorized Practice of Law Proceedings [Electronic resource].

20. Recent Developments in Unauthorized Practice of Law Enforcement // Illinois Courts. 2018. [Electronic resource].

21. American Bar Association. Standing Committee on Ethics and Professional Responsibility. Formal Opinion 512: Generative Artificial Intelligence Tools. July 29, 2024. [Electronic resource].

22. Federal Rules of Civil Procedure. Rule 12. Defenses and Objections: When and How Presented; Motion for Judgment on the Pleadings; Consolidating Motions; Waiving Defenses; Pretrial Hearing [Electronic resource].

1. Electronic source: https://www.pacermonitor.com/public/case/63415305/Nippon_Life_Insurance_Company_of_America_v_OpenAI_Foundation_et_al ↑
2. Electronic source: OpenAI hit with lawsuit claiming ChatGPT acted as an unlicensed lawyer | Reuters https://www.reuters.com/legal/legalindustry/openai-hit-with-lawsuit-claiming-chatgpt-acted-an-unlicensed-lawyer-2026-03-05 ↑
3. Electronic source: https://www.pacermonitor.com/public/case/63415305/Nippon_Life_Insurance_Company_of_America_v_OpenAI_Foundation_et_al ↑
4. Bell Atlantic Corp. v. Twombly // United States Reports. 2007. Vol. 550. P. 544–570. ↑
5. Ashcroft v. Iqbal // United States Reports. 2009. Vol. 556. P. 662–699. ↑
6. ISSN 3033-7674, Scientific Platform 21st Century Journal, No 6 (September 2025), pp. 3–34; No 7 (October 2025), pp. 4-36. Electronic resource: https://www.episs.ru (accessed 10.03.2026). ↑
7. Bell Atlantic Corp. v. Twombly, Ashcroft v. Iqbal ↑
8. Cited above ↑
9. HPI Health Care Services, Inc. v. Mt. Vernon Hospital, Inc. // Illinois Reports. 1989. Vol. 131, 2d. P. 145–175; North Eastern Reporter, Second Series. Vol. 545. P. 672–687. ↑
10. Podolsky v. Alma Energy Corp. // Federal Reporter, Third Series. 1998. Vol. 143. P. 364–372. ↑
11. People ex rel. Illinois State Bar Ass’n v. Schafer // Illinois Reports. 1949. Vol. 404. P. 45–54; North Eastern Reporter, Second Series. Vol. 87. P. 773–777. ↑
12. Illinois Supreme Court Rule 779. Unauthorized Practice of Law Proceedings // Illinois Supreme Court Rules. Amended Jan. 29, 2019, effective Mar. 1, 2019.   ↑
13. People ex rel. Illinois State Bar Ass’n v. Schafer ↑
14. Illinois Supreme Court Rule 779. Unauthorized Practice of Law Proceedings ↑
15. Recent Developments in Unauthorized Practice of Law Enforcement // Illinois Courts [Electronic resource]. 2018.   ↑
16. Walden v. Fiore // United States Reports. 2014. Vol. 571. P. 277–291. ↑
17. Daimler AG v. Bauman // United States Reports. 2014. Vol. 571. P. 117–142. ↑
18. Ford Motor Co. v. Montana Eighth Judicial District Court // United States Reports. 2021. Vol. 592. P. 351–371. ↑
19. Illinois Compiled Statutes. 735 ILCS 5/2-209. Act submitting to jurisdiction – Process [Electronic resource]. ↑
20. Cited ↑
21. HPI Health Care Services, Inc. v. Mt. Vernon Hospital, Inc. // Illinois Reports. 1989. Vol. 131, 2d. P. 145–175; North Eastern Reporter, Second Series. Vol. 545. P. 672–687. ↑
22. Podolsky v. Alma Energy Corp. // Federal Reporter, Third Series. 1998. Vol. 143. P. 364–372. ↑
23. People ex rel. Illinois State Bar Ass’n v. Schafer // Illinois Reports. 1949. Vol. 404. P. 45–54; North Eastern Reporter, Second Series. Vol. 87. P. 773–777. ↑
24. Illinois Supreme Court Rule 779. Unauthorized Practice of Law Proceedings [Electronic resource] ↑
25. Recent Developments in Unauthorized Practice of Law Enforcement // Illinois Courts. 2018 [Electronic resource] ↑
26. American Bar Association. Standing Committee on Ethics and Professional Responsibility. Formal Opinion 512: Generative Artificial Intelligence Tools. July 29, 2024 [Electronic resource] ↑
27. Cited: Bell Atlantic Corp. v. Twombly ↑
28. Cited: Ashcroft v. Iqbal ↑
29. Federal Rules of Civil Procedure. Rule 12. Defenses and Objections: When and How Presented; Motion for Judgment on the Pleadings; Consolidating Motions; Waiving Defenses; Pretrial Hearing [Electronic resource]. ↑