OpenAI and its CEO Sam Altman were sued by Florida’s attorney general on Monday in the first state lawsuit over ChatGPT’s alleged links to numerous violent incidents.
The lawsuit accuses OpenAI of turning a blind eye to safety concerns in favor of “winning the AI arms race and making millions.”
“Today, we announced the nation’s first state-led lawsuit against OpenAI and its CEO Sam Altman,” said Florida Attorney General James Usmeyer. “OpenAI and Altman ignored internal and external safety warnings, exposed children to great risk, and allowed dangerous products to reach millions of Floridians.”
“Defendants’ misrepresentations about ChatGPT and their careless introduction of ChatGPT to Florida and the world have resulted in mass shooters being aided and abetted in deadly assaults, vulnerable populations being induced to commit suicide, professionals being publicly humiliated, users losing critical thinking skills, and minors becoming addicted to tools that feign human sympathy in order to collect data without parental supervision,” the 83-page lawsuit alleges.
The Florida Attorney General’s Office launched a criminal investigation into the company in April. The study sought to determine what role ChatGPT played in last year’s mass shooting at Florida State University. The gunman is said to have consulted a chatbot before the attack. OpenAI is also facing a civil lawsuit from the family of one of the shooting victims.
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 horrific crime,” an OpenAI spokesperson previously told NBC News. TechCrunch has reached out to OpenAI for comment.
OpenAI just concluded a separate lawsuit involving former co-founder Elon Musk, who sued the company in 2024 for betraying its original mission of helping humanity by turning the organization into a commercial enterprise. The case was brought to a close after a jury quickly decided that the statute of limitations had run because Musk had waited so long to file a lawsuit.
This is just the latest lawsuit to try to link ChatGPT to violent deaths. OpenAI was sued last year by the parents of Adam Lane, a California teenager who took his own life after discussing suicide with a chatbot. In this case, ChatGPT allegedly provided “technical specifications” for various suicide methods, even though it also introduced mental health-related resources. Other lawsuits are ongoing, including one that alleges chatbots are involved in suicide, stalking, and murder.
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