Florida Legal professional Normal James Ulthmeier has announced that the state’s Workplace of Statewide Prosecution has opened a prison investigation into OpenAI and ChatGPT. The investigation was opened as a result of the suspect in a mass shooting at Florida State University in 2025 reportedly used ChatGPT within the lead as much as the capturing.
Per Uthmeier, “Florida regulation states that anybody who aids, abets, or counsels somebody within the fee of a criminal offense, and that crime is dedicated or tried, could also be thought-about a principal to the crime.” That signifies that the responses offered by ChatGPT to the shooter may very well be interpreted because the AI assistant aiding and abetting his actions. Or at the very least that is what Florida appears considering arguing.
OpenAI offered the next assertion when requested to touch upon the Florida investigation:
Final yr’s mass capturing at Florida State College was a tragedy, however ChatGPT will not be chargeable for this horrible crime. After studying of the incident, we recognized a ChatGPT account believed to be related to the suspect and proactively shared this info with regulation enforcement. We proceed to cooperate with authorities. On this case, ChatGPT offered factual responses to questions with info that may very well be discovered broadly throughout public sources on the web, and it didn’t encourage or promote unlawful or dangerous exercise. ChatGPT is a general-purpose device utilized by tons of of tens of millions of individuals each day for authentic functions. We work constantly to strengthen our safeguards to detect dangerous intent, restrict misuse, and reply appropriately when security dangers come up.
As a part of the investigation, Florida has subpoenaed OpenAI for info on “all insurance policies and inside coaching supplies” associated to how the corporate handles issues like customers threatening to hurt others, threatening to hurt themselves and the way OpenAI responds to regulation enforcement. The state can be asking OpenAI to share its organizational chart and any publicly launched statements on the capturing.
“Florida is main the best way in cracking down on AI’s use in prison conduct, and if ChatGPT had been an individual, it could be going through prices for homicide,” Legal professional Normal James Uthmeier mentioned. “This prison investigation will decide whether or not OpenAI bears prison accountability for ChatGPT’s actions within the capturing at Florida State College final yr.”
Florida’s investigation isn’t the primary time OpenAI has been linked to a mass capturing. Canadian regulators called for OpenAI to vary the way it approaches threats of hurt following a Wall Street Journal report that claimed the corporate flagged the account of a Canadian capturing suspect in 2025 however did not deliver their threats to regulation enforcement. The corporate agreed to new policies round the way it works with Canadian regulation enforcement in March. Individually, OpenAI remains to be within the midst of a wrongful death lawsuit from 2025 for the position it could have performed within the suicide of a teenage person.
