Florida Attorney General James Uthmeier announced Thursday that his office planned to investigate OpenAI over ChatGPT’s alleged role in a fatal shooting last year.
In April 2025, a gunman opened fire on the campus of Florida State University, killing two and injuring five. Last week, the lawyers of one of the victims of the shooting claimed that ChatGPT had been used to plan the attack. The victim’s family said that plan to sue OpenAI over the incident.
“Artificial intelligence should advance humanity, not destroy it,” Uthmeier said in a statement posted on X. “We demand answers about OpenAI’s activities that have hurt children, endangered Americans, and facilitated the recent FSU mass shooting. The wrongdoers must be held accountable.” Uthmeier added in a video that subpoenas are “imminent” as part of the investigation.
ChatGPT has been linked to a growing number of deaths and violent incidents – including murders, suicides and shootings – and has raised concerns about the emergence of psychologists call “AI psychosis”, delusions that are reinforced, encouraged or deepened by chatbot communication.
For example, Stein-Erik Soelberg, a man with a history of mental health problems, regularly communicated with ChatGPT before he killed his mother and then himself last year, according to a Wall Street Journal report. research. The chatbot was seen often they reinforce paranoid thoughts which destroyed him in the face of murder-suicide.
When asked for comment by TechCrunch, an OpenAI spokesperson provided the following statement: “Each week, more than 900 million people use ChatGPT to improve their daily lives through uses such as learning new skills or navigating complex healthcare systems. Our ongoing security work continues to play an important role in bringing these benefits to everyday people, as well as supporting scientific research and discovery of ChatGPT people.” We are responding in a safe and appropriate manner and continue to improve our technology. We will cooperate with the Attorney General’s investigation.”
The Florida investigation continues a streak of bad luck for OpenAI. A New Yorker profile about Sam Altman published earlier this week showed criticism and discontent within the company and among its investors, even citing a Microsoft executive as he says: “I think there’s a small but real chance he’ll eventually be remembered as a Bernie Madoff or Sam Bankman-Fried-level swindler.” Meanwhile, a Stargate related project in the UK there had to be a pausereportedly due to high energy costs and regulation.
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