by WorldTribune Staff, June 1, 2026 Non-AI Real World News
In a first, the state of Florida on Monday sued OpenAI, arguing the artificial intelligence firm released an unsafe product in ChatGPT that drove “a litany of harms.”
The lawsuit, filed by Florida Attorney General James Uthmeier, alleges that OpenAI permitted its ChatGPT to aid and abet mass shooters, encourage user suicides, damage users’ critical thinking skills, and addict minors, the Wall Street Journal reported.
“This litany of harms is driven by Defendants’ insatiable quest to win the AI arms race and amass large fortunes, despite knowing the danger of ChatGPT,” the lawsuit states.
The lawsuit also seeks to hold OpenAI co-founder Sam Altman directly accountable for allowing the product to be released with these alleged faults.
The suit says it seeks to protect Floridians from OpenAI’s conduct and mitigate what it describes as a dangerous public nuisance.
Uthmeier opened a criminal investigation into OpenAI in April over the role its chatbot played in a mass shooting that killed two people at Florida State University last year.
The suspect, identified by police as Phoenix Ikner, asked ChatGPT how many classmates he needed to kill to attract national media attention, and also how to use a gun. The chatbot dispensed advice for his questions.
Uthmeier said the chats included questions about weapons, ammunition, timing and where on campus crowds would be largest in the minutes before Ikner allegedly opened fire.
“We cannot have AI bots that are advising people on how to kill others,” Uthmeier said.
“If it was a person on the other end of that screen, we would be charging them with murder. Just because this is a chatbot, an AI, does not mean that there is no criminal culpability,” Uthmeier added.
The suit alleges that OpenAI marketed ChatGPT as reliable despite its tendency to sometimes generate dangerous misinformation.
“ChatGPT was designed by the Defendants to keep users hooked into conversations by any means, regardless of the truth, because it leads to more use of the chatbot, more training data for its improvement, and more market value for OpenAI,” the suit says.
The suit describes a lack of safeguards in ChatGPT for teens and minors as reckless, and refers to instances of adolescent users being encouraged by AI to take their own lives.
The suit says OpenAI created some parental controls, but does not require children’s accounts to be linked to a parent’s account.
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