SAN FRANCISCO – Florida’s legal professional basic introduced a felony investigation of ChatGPT-maker OpenAI, alleging the corporate’s chatbot advised the person accused of killing two folks in a capturing at Florida State University final yr which ammunition to use and where and when to strike.
“The chatbot advised the shooter on what type of gun to use, on which ammo went with which gun, on whether or not a gun would be useful at short range,” Florida Attorney General James Uthmeier mentioned at a information convention Tuesday. “If it was a person on the other end of that screen, we would be charging them with murder.”
Uthmeier’s workplace despatched subpoenas to OpenAI on Tuesday, asking for the factitious intelligence firm’s insurance policies on how to reply when its customers make threats to hurt others throughout conversations with ChatGPT, in accordance to an announcement. The felony investigation introduced Tuesday follows a civil inquiry Uthmeier introduced this month.
“Last year’s mass shooting at Florida State University was a tragedy, but ChatGPT is not responsible for this terrible crime,” OpenAI spokesperson Kate Waters mentioned. “After learning of the incident, we identified a ChatGPT account believed to be associated with the suspect and proactively shared this information with law enforcement.”
ChatGPT supplied “factual responses to questions with information that could be found broadly across public sources on the internet, and it did not encourage or promote illegal or harmful activity,” Waters mentioned. (The Washington Post has a content material partnership with OpenAI.)
Two folks have been killed and six others injured within the capturing at Florida State in Tallahassee final April after a university pupil opened hearth on campus, authorities mentioned on the time. The suspected shooter, Phoenix Ikner, was shot by police who had swarmed to the campus and was later hospitalized. Ikner has been charged with a number of counts of homicide and tried homicide.
“ChatGPT advised the shooter on what time of day would be appropriate for the shooting to interact with more people and where on campus would be the place to encounter a higher population,” Uthmeier mentioned on the Tuesday information convention.
OpenAI faces intense scrutiny from legislation enforcement and elected officers after authorities alleged that the shooter in Florida and suspect in a February mass capturing in Canada that killed 9 folks mentioned their intention to hurt others in conversations with ChatGPT. Several households of people that died by suicide have filed lawsuits claiming the chatbot contributed to the deaths of their family members.
The tragic incidents have fueled a debate about what obligations AI corporations have to monitor person conversations and flag regarding ones to legislation enforcement.
In a December 2025 doc outlining how its AI fashions function, OpenAI mentioned that it has a system to monitor and mechanically flag conversations which may point out a person is planning to hurt somebody to its human reviewers. Those reviewers then determined whether or not to escalate the state of affairs to police. It is unclear whether or not the FSU shooter’s conversations triggered human evaluate by OpenAI.
AI corporations prepare their chatbots not to reply questions with offensive content material or info that might be used to hurt folks, however the nature of how the know-how works means it’s tough to predict how a chatbot might react in each attainable situation, mentioned Ramayya Krishnan, a professor at Carnegie Mellon University who has advised the White House and Department of Defense on AI coverage and governance. “The guardrails are not 100 percent effective.”
Concerns about AI’s impression on folks and on the economic system have gotten political points, and Florida’s legal professional basic and its governor, Ron DeSantis, have expressed their very own skepticism in regards to the AI business.
The state has additionally develop into a battleground in a rising break up contained in the Republican Party over how to regulate AI. DeSantis pushed the state’s legislature to cross an “AI bill of rights” that may have instituted a collection of limits on how corporations may use AI in shopper merchandise, however after opposition from President Donald Trump, legislators didn’t cross the invoice.
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