Florida Attorney General James Uthmeier filed a first-of-its-kind state lawsuit on Monday against OpenAI and its CEO Sam Altman, accusing the company of rushing ChatGPT to market while ignoring safety warnings that allegedly contributed to violent incidents, mass shootings, and harm to minors. The 83-page complaint, announced as the first state-led action of its kind in the U.S., claims OpenAI prioritized "the AI arms race and amass[ing] large fortunes" over addressing internal and external safety concerns. Uthmeier said OpenAI and Altman "ignored internal and external safety warnings, put children at great risk, and allowed a dangerous product to reach millions of Floridians," with the lawsuit alleging that ChatGPT has been used to aid mass shooters, encourage vulnerable people toward suicide, humiliate professionals publicly, and addict minors to a product that "feigns human compassion to collect their data with no parental oversight."
The suit stems from a criminal investigation Uthmeier's office launched in April, which examined ChatGPT's potential role in last year's mass shooting at Florida State University. According to allegations in the complaint, the shooter consulted the chatbot before carrying out the attack. The family of one of the victims has also filed a separate civil suit against OpenAI over the incident. OpenAI has rejected responsibility, with a spokesperson previously telling NBC News that "last year's mass shooting at Florida State University was a tragedy, but ChatGPT is not responsible for this terrible crime." TechCrunch has reached out to OpenAI for comment on the new state lawsuit.
The Florida action comes just as OpenAI closed out another high-profile legal fight involving co-founder Elon Musk, who sued the company in 2024 alleging it had abandoned its original nonprofit mission by restructuring as a for-profit business. That case ended quickly after a jury determined Musk had waited too long to bring his claims. The Florida lawsuit represents an escalation in regulatory pressure on OpenAI at a time when state attorneys general are increasingly scrutinizing how AI companies handle safety, content moderation, and protections for minors—a concern that has grown as ChatGPT's user base has swelled into the hundreds of millions worldwide.