Florida sues – Florida’s attorney general has filed an 83-page lawsuit against OpenAI and CEO Sam Altman, saying the company prioritized profit and speed over user safety, failed to warn about risks, and could have designed ChatGPT to reduce harm—after incidents the suit lin
When Florida Attorney General Ashley Moody took the stage Monday morning, the message was blunt: she said her office was going to challenge OpenAI, and she framed the fight around damage she believes ChatGPT can cause.
“People are getting hurt, parents are getting deceived, and they need to pay for it,” Uthmeier said in a press conference Monday morning.
The lawsuit, filed by Florida State Attorney General James Uthmeier on Monday, targets OpenAI and CEO Sam Altman. Florida says OpenAI’s own public messaging—an OpenAI parental resource page saying ChatGPT is “built with safety in mind. ” plus a screenshot included with the complaint—doesn’t match the risks Florida believes the chatbot can create.
Florida is the first state to sue OpenAI.
The complaint argues that OpenAI prioritized profit and speed over user safety and that the harms caused by ChatGPT “are substantial and outweigh any benefits of ChatGPT use.”
In an 83-page suit, Uthmeier says OpenAI failed to provide warnings about the risks of ChatGPT. The filing alleges the chatbot can cause addiction and behavioral harm. Florida also claims OpenAI could have used alternative designs to minimize harms. and it argues the company either knew or should have known that its design encourages self-harm and violence—including harms “among other things harmful to Floridians — particularly children and teens.” The suit further alleges Altman knew the dangers of ChatGPT but ignored them.
“The threat of ChatGPT to Floridians (and humanity) is not lost on either OpenAI or Altman,” the suit reads.
Florida’s lawsuit also takes aim at what it calls OpenAI’s incentives. It alleges OpenAI is driven by an “insatiable quest to win the AI arms race and amass large fortunes. despite knowing the danger of ChatGPT.” The suit says OpenAI leverages user data to boost its market value “at unacceptable costs. ” and it describes the company’s rise as “attributable to a web of deceit and the exploitation of users.”.
The complaint lays out incidents it says ChatGPT was linked to. including a case involving Adam Raine. a 16-year-old who died by suicide after extensive conversations with ChatGPT in which he expressed suicidal thoughts. The suit says the chatbot wrote his suicide note for him. It also quotes the broader claim that the chatbot didn’t simply respond. The suit reads: “ChatGPT did not simply respond to Adam. It promoted and aided his suicide, volunteering information that would assist in his death.”.
Florida also points to a shooting last April at Florida State University. The suit references chat logs shared with CBS News in April by the Florida State Attorney’s Office. saying the suspect asked ChatGPT how many shooting victims it would take to garner media attention and the busiest time at the Florida State University student union. where the shooting took place. Two people were killed and several others were wounded, according to the complaint’s description.
The same April, Florida opened up a criminal investigation into OpenAI after determining the suspect was offered “significant advice” by ChatGPT before the shooting.
Florida’s filing also cites a separate case involving a man accused of killing two University of South Florida graduate students. In that account. the complaint says the accused person was linked to ChatGPT after asking what would happen if someone was “put in a black garbage bag and thrown in a dumpster.”.
Uthmeier’s Monday briefing also referenced a mass shooting in Canada earlier this year. The shooter had long conversations with ChatGPT about scenarios involving gun violence before carrying out the attack, according to a lawsuit filed in April by the families of the victims.
“Today we’re going to send a message to Open AI,” Uthmeier said in his Monday morning press briefing. “Get ready for a fight, and there’s not one more important than this right now.”
OpenAI, in a statement to CBS News, said it has built safety for minors into its products. The company pointed to age protection tools, a more protective experience specifically for minors, and parental tools to monitor a child’s use of AI.
“Losing a child is the most devastating tragedy that can happen to a family and we know that no words can come close to addressing the pain of such a loss,” OpenAI said. The company added that AI is a “new and powerful technology” and that minors need “significant protection.”
The statement continued: “We know pointing to this work will not bring a child back, but we’re committed to getting this right.”
As the legal battle begins, the dispute is sharpened by the contrast at the heart of Florida’s complaint: whether warnings and design choices were enough—or whether, in Florida’s view, the system’s speed and profit-driven incentives came first.
Florida sues OpenAI Sam Altman ChatGPT lawsuit AI safety cybersecurity minors protection AI arms race user data
So basically Florida mad at an app again.
If parents are letting kids talk to ChatGPT unsupervised then yeah that’s on them too. But suing OpenAI sounds like they’re just trying to get money or scare other companies. I don’t even know what they expect it to do, like suddenly stop giving answers?
Wait I thought OpenAI already says it’s safe?? Like the article mentions warnings and safety in mind. If Florida can prove it caused addiction and self harm then okay, but it still feels like they’re blaming the AI for people being irresponsible. Also wasn’t Sam Altman like, in the news for something else? Seems like politics more than tech.
This is gonna get messy. They say “prioritized profit and speed” like that’s the whole reason, but every company does that. If ChatGPT can encourage violence and self-harm then why wasn’t it blocked already, like the whole point of filters? And the fact it says Florida is first to sue… so everyone else is just waiting? My cousin said it helped her make a homework cheat so now I’m like… are they talking about that too or nah.