Florida Legal professional Normal James Uthmeier sued OpenAI and CEO Sam Altman on Monday, accusing the corporate of placing revenue over security, fueling violence and pushing a product it knew might hurt customers.
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“The rise of OpenAI is attributable to an online of deceit and the exploitation of customers (together with Floridians), leveraging their knowledge and security to spice up OpenAI’s market worth at unacceptable prices,” the criticism reviewed by NBC Information and filed Monday mentioned.
Florida is the primary state to sue OpenAI and Altman over design and security.
The civil motion, looking for penalties and a courtroom order quite than legal prices, mentioned Uthmeier “seeks to carry Altman personally chargeable for the hurt he has precipitated Floridians by way of his reckless and willful conduct as founder and CEO of OpenAI, together with his utter disregard for the danger to human life brought on by his companies’ conduct.” The motion is separate from a criminal investigation into OpenAI that Uthmeier opened in late April, which stays ongoing.
The wide-ranging lawsuit accuses OpenAI of 4 counts of misleading and unfair commerce practices, two counts of negligence, two counts of violating product legal responsibility legal guidelines, and one depend every of fraudulent misrepresentation and inflicting a public nuisance. The swimsuit claims that OpenAI’s programs current a “nice hazard of dependancy, cognitive decline, suicide, violence, and associated harms” to customers.
OpenAI didn’t instantly reply to a request for remark about Monday’s lawsuit.
OpenAI has maintained that it designs its systems with “security at each step” and says that it has “safeguards in place to assist individuals, particularly teenagers, when conversations flip delicate.”
“We proceed enhancing ChatGPT’s coaching to acknowledge and reply to indicators of psychological or emotional misery, de-escalate conversations, and information individuals towards real-world assist,” the company says.
The criticism additionally factors to the alleged use of ChatGPT within the planning of a mass shooting at Florida State University and the killing of two graduate students at the University of South Florida.
“Final 12 months’s mass taking pictures at Florida State College was a tragedy, however ChatGPT isn’t answerable for this horrible crime,” OpenAI spokesman Drew Pusateri mentioned in an announcement to NBC Information after the corporate was sued by the household of a sufferer of the taking pictures.
“On this case, ChatGPT offered factual responses to questions with info that might be discovered broadly throughout public sources on the web, and it didn’t encourage or promote unlawful or dangerous exercise,” he mentioned.
The lawsuit provides to a rising record of authorized efforts introduced by governments in addition to non-public residents in opposition to OpenAI, lots of which comprise related allegations that the corporate’s core choices can have critical hostile results on customers.
OpenAI has been sued by the representatives of at least seven individuals who allege the corporate’s merchandise precipitated customers to commit suicide or develop dangerous delusions.
OpenAI has additionally been sued by the households of a number of victims of February’s mass shooting in Tumbler Ridge, British Columbia. The victims’ households argue that OpenAI ought to have reported the suspect’s worrying ChatGPT use months earlier to legislation enforcement after the suspect’s gun-related interactions with ChatGPT raised alarms inside OpenAI’s security groups.
Altman apologized to the Tumbler Ridge community in late April, vowing to proceed “working with all ranges of presidency to assist guarantee one thing like this by no means occurs once more.”
Monday’s swimsuit represents the most recent salvo in Florida’s battle in opposition to AI corporations, as Uthmeier and Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis have emerged as leading critics of America’s largest AI corporations.
In December, DeSantis released a proposal to create an AI Bill of Rights for Florida residents, highlighting people’ proper to privateness whereas additionally critiquing the development of information facilities that energy AI programs. DeSantis has additionally clashed with the White House to say states’ ability to regulate AI companies.
Monday’s swimsuit comes amid a swell of anti-AI sentiment throughout the nation, with many commencement speakers facing boos for mentioning AI and data center construction running into heated public opposition. Different AI programs have additionally been the goal of current authorized motion, as Kentucky’s attorney general sued chatbot developer Character.AI in January, accusing it of “prioritizing their very own income over the protection of youngsters.”
The criticism on Monday covers a big selection of generally cited dangers from AI, starting from threats to teenagers’ psychological well being, sycophancy, illicit provision of medical and authorized recommendation and even existential threat to human survival.
Referencing a number of commercials about ChatGPT’s capability to assist farmers and different small companies, the swimsuit argues: “these commercials don’t disclose that ChatGPT could be mistaken, could make errors, or that it will probably present false, nonsensical, or hallucinated info.”
“ChatGPT’s unreliability is harmful,” the swimsuit continues, later noting that “its use can result in self-harm, cognitive decline, and behavioral dependancy.”
The swimsuit additionally criticizes ChatGPT’s propensity to agree with customers, arguing that the service’s sycophancy can lead customers to develop harmful psychological attachment to the platform and trigger customers to pay cash to unlock extra beneficiant utilization quotas. This “results in extra use of the chatbot, extra coaching knowledge for its enchancment, and extra market worth for OpenAI,” the criticism says.
The criticism notes incidents by which ChatGPT allegedly offered harmful medical recommendation to customers — for instance, telling teenager Sam Nelson the way to combine kratom and Xanax. Nelson’s mother alleges OpenAI and ChatGPT are responsible for his wrongful demise in Might 2025.
In an announcement offered to The New York Occasions in response to an article about Nelson, OpenAI spokesman Drew Pusateri mentioned: “These interactions came about on an earlier model of ChatGPT that’s now not accessible. ChatGPT isn’t an alternative choice to medical or psychological well being care, and now we have continued to strengthen the way it responds in delicate and acute conditions with enter from psychological well being consultants.”
Altman and his co-founders, together with Elon Musk, launched OpenAI as a nonprofit AI analysis lab in 2015. It has since created a for-profit company that’s reportedly preparing to file for an IPO, although the for-profit entity stays legally nested beneath the nonprofit OpenAI Basis.
OpenAI was recently valued at $852 billion after elevating $122 billion in its newest funding spherical in March.
Monday’s swimsuit isn’t the primary time Altman and OpenAI have confronted claims of recklessly prioritizing revenue. In a lawsuit filed in 2024, Elon Musk accused the corporate of abandoning its non-profit standing by valuing industrial success over the general public good.
Musk left OpenAI in 2018 after an acrimonious energy battle with Altman and different OpenAI leaders. In Might, a jury unanimously found that Musk had waited too long to sue, although Musk mentioned he’ll enchantment the decision.