OpenAI and its CEO, Sam Altman, were sued by Florida’s attorney general on Monday in a first-of-its-kind state court effort over ChatGPT’s alleged links to some violent incidents.
The lawsuit accuses OpenAI of looking backward on security concerns as it sought to prioritize winning “the AI arms race and amassing large fortunes.”
“Today, we announced the state’s first lawsuit against OpenAI and its CEO, Sam Altman,” said Florida Attorney General James Othmeier. “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 the defendants’ misrepresentations about ChatGPT and the careless introduction of ChatGPT to Florida and the world, mass shooters have been aided and abetted in deadly violence, vulnerable people have been encouraged to kill themselves, professionals have been publicly humiliated, users have lost the critical thinking skills to collect people. their data without parental supervision”, h 83 page lawsuit claims.
The Florida attorney general’s office opened a criminal investigation into the company in April. This investigation sought to determine the role ChatGPT may have played in a mass attack that took place last year at Florida State University. Before the attack, the attacker allegedly consulted the chatbot. OpenAI was too sued in a civil suit from 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 he previously told NBC News. TechCrunch has reached out to OpenAI for comment.
OpenAI just wrapped up a different legal case involving former co-founder Elon Musk, who sued the company in 2024, accusing it of betraying its original mission to help humanity by turning the organization into a for-profit business. The case was settled after the jury quickly decided that Musk had waited too long to file the case and that the statute of limitations had run out.
This is just the latest legal case to try to link ChatGPT to violent deaths. Last year, OpenAI was sued by the parents of Adam Raine, a California teenager who killed himself after discussing suicide with the chatbot. In that case, ChatGPT allegedly offered “technical specifications” for various suicide methods, even as it referred him to mental health resources. Other lawsuits — including those alleging the chatbot’s culpability for suicides, stalking and murder — are in progress.
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