Breaking: Florida Sues OpenAI, Alleges Company Allowed ChatGPT to Aid Mass Shooters
In a first-of-its-kind lawsuit, Florida announced Monday it was going after OpenAI and chief executive after the state says its ChatGPT model caused irreparable harms.
“The 83-page suit alleges that OpenAI allowed ChatGPT to aid and abet mass shooters, encourage people to take their own lives, degrade users’ critical thinking skills and addict minors to a tool that feigns human compassion,” The Wall Street Journal reported.
“This litany of harms is driven by Defendants’ insatiable quest to win the AI arms race and amass large fortunes, despite knowing the danger of ChatGPT,” reads the suit filed by Florida Attorney General James Uthmeier, a Republican.
This suit is on top of another suit by the family of a victim of a Florida State University shooter, Phoenix Ikner, who allegedly used ChatGPT to plan the crime.
“In this day and age, teenagers use ChatGPT as their personal life coach. Those aren’t my words. Those are the words of the CEO of OpenAI. So the industry is very well aware of how their product is being used, and the fact that there are not safeguards in place that would prevent the act that happened here in Tallahassee, at Florida State, are just things that have to be answered for us and answered for the public,” said Gregorio Francis, lawyer for the family of Tiru Chabba, according to WTVT-TV.
The suit, filed last month, said that Ikner utilized “input and assistance of an artificial intelligence (AI) product the OpenAI defendants created, developed, maintained, monitored, and controlled called ChatGPT” to carry out the April 2025 attack which killed two.
However, Florida’s suit is the first time that a state has tried to hold tech companies liable for the harm done by AI.
In addition, Uthmaier opened a criminal investigation into OpenAI’s role in the FSU attack.
The state’s suit alleges that OpenAI’s claims that ChatGPT was created with user safety in mind is “[n]ot so.”
“ChatGPT was designed by the Defendants to keep users hooked into conversations by any means, regardless of the truth, because it leads to more use of the chatbot, more training data for its improvement, and more market value for OpenAI,” the suit reads.
ChatGPT’s role in planning mass shootings came into the fore after a transgender shooter in British Columbia, Canada, allegedly used it to plan an attack which killed eight innocent people.
The Journal reported that the shooter’s conversations with ChatGPT were flagged internally as disturbing, but “OpenAI leaders ultimately decided not to contact authorities.”
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