On Monday, OpenAI and its CEO Sam Altman were sued by the Florida attorney general in a first-of-its-kind state lawsuit over ChatGPT’s alleged ties to a number of violent incidents.
The lawsuit accuses OpenAI of diverting attention from security as it seeks to prioritize winning the “AI arms race and amassing vast fortunes.”
“Today we announced the nation’s first state-led lawsuit against OpenAI and its CEO Sam Altman,” said Florida Attorney General James Uthmeier. “OpenAI and Altman ignored internal and external security warnings, exposed children to enormous risk, and allowed an unsafe product to reach millions of Floridians.”
“Because of defendants’ false statements about ChatGPT and their careless introduction of ChatGPT to Florida and the world, mass shooters were aided and abetted in deadly rampages, vulnerable people were encouraged to commit suicide, professionals suffered public humiliation, users lost their critical thinking skills, and minors became addicted to a tool masquerading as human compassion to collect data without parental supervision,” he said. 83-page lawsuit claims.
In April, the Florida Attorney General’s office opened an investigation into the company. The purpose of this investigation was to determine what role ChatGPT may have played in the mass shooting that occurred last year at Florida State University. It is alleged that the shooter consulted a chatbot before the attack. OpenAI was there too defendant in a civil suit by the family of one of the victims of this shooting.
OpenAI has previously denied responsibility for the Florida shooting. “Last year’s mass shooting at Florida State University was a tragedy, but ChatGPT is not responsible for this terrible crime” – OpenAI spokesperson he previously told NBC News. TechCrunch has reached out to OpenAI for comment.
OpenAI just settled another legal case involving former co-founder Elon Musk, who sued the company in 2024, accusing it of betraying its original mission to assist humanity by turning the organization into a for-profit business. The case ended after a jury quickly decided that Musk waited too long to file the lawsuit and that the statute of limitations had run out.
This is just the latest legal case that has attempted to link ChatGPT to violent deaths. Last year, OpenAI was sued by the parents of Adam Raine, a California teenager who took his own life after talking to a chatbot about suicide. In this case, ChatGPT allegedly offered “technical specifications” for various suicide methods, although it also referred him to mental health resources. Other lawsuits — including those alleging chatbot liability for suicides, stalking, and murder – are in progress.