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OpenAI and its CEO, Sam Altman, were sued by the Florida attorney general on Monday, in a first-of-its-kind state litigation effort over ChatGPT’s alleged links to a number of violent incidents.
The lawsuit accuses OpenAI of looking the other way on safety concerns as it has sought to prioritize winning “the AI arms race and amass large fortunes.”
“Today, we announced the first-in-the-nation state-led lawsuit against OpenAI and its CEO, Sam Altman,” said Florida Attorney General James Uthmeier. “OpenAI and Altman ignored internal and external safety warnings, put children at great risk, and allowed a dangerous product to reach millions of Floridians.”
“Because of Defendants’ misrepresentations about ChatGPT and their careless introduction of ChatGPT to Florida and the world, mass shooters have been aided and abetted in deadly rampages, vulnerable people have been encouraged into suicide, professionals have suffered public humiliation, users have lost critical thinking skills, and minors have become addicted to a tool that feigns human compassion to collect their data with no parental oversight,” the 83-page lawsuit claims.
The Florida attorney general’s office launched a criminal investigation into the company in April. That probe sought to determine what role ChatGPT may have played in a mass shooting that took place last year at Florida State University. Prior to the attack, the shooter is alleged to have consulted the chatbot. OpenAI has also been sued in a civil suit by the family of one of the victims of that 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,” an OpenAI spokesperson previously told NBC News. TechCrunch reached out to OpenAI for comment.
OpenAI just concluded a different legal case involving former co-founder Elon Musk, who sued the company in 2024, accusing it of having betrayed its original mission to help humanity by converting the organization into a for-profit business. The case concluded after the jury swiftly decided that Musk had waited too long to file the case and that the statute of limitations had passed.
This is only 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 teen who took his own life after discussing suicide with the chatbot. In that case, ChatGPT allegedly offered “technical specifications” for various suicide methods, despite also referring him to mental health resources. Other lawsuits — including ones alleging the chatbot’s culpability in suicides, stalking, and murder — are ongoing.
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