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Florida has become the first US state to file a lawsuit against OpenAI ChatGPTSafety and design, in addition to a huge wave of lawsuits existing against the company.
according to The suit (PDF) Filed Monday by Florida Attorney General James Othmeyer, OpenAI built a “web of deception and exploitation of users, including Florida residents.” Florida claims The company violated state laws against deceptive or unfair trade practices to promote its market value — and profits — over the safety of its users.
Florida doesn’t believe OpenAI’s promise of safe construction, the beginning of the complaint shows.
The state’s lawsuit against OpenAI and its CEO, Sam Altman, says they deliberately ignored warnings, both inside and outside the company, about the many risks that artificial intelligence poses to its users. Florida alleges that OpenAI lied about ChatGPT’s reliability and suitability for children and encouraged prolonged use that led to cognitive decline in users.
(Disclosure: Ziff Davis, the parent company of CNET, in 2025 filed a lawsuit against OpenAI, alleging that it infringed Ziff Davis’s copyrights in training and operating its AI systems.)
The lawsuit comes as Florida continues a criminal investigation into whether ChatGPT played a role last year Mass shooting at Florida State University Which led to the death of two people and the injury of six others. In this case, the shooter allegedly used ChatGPT to plan the attack, including providing advice on the type of weapon, timing of the massacre, and how to dispose of human bodies.
At the time, OpenAI said: “Last year’s mass shooting at Florida State University was a tragedy, but ChatGPT is not responsible for this terrible crime.”
OpenAI CEO Sam Altman was named in the lawsuit filed in Florida.
There are growing concerns about how ChatGPT and other chatbots are feeding people Acts of violence and harmful delusions. Experts have found that chatbots like ChatGPT can have difficulty with this Back away from dangerous thoughts And be very eager to please as much as they can Providing factually incorrect informationa problem called flattery.
last Area of concern For lawmakers and technology watchdog groups, it’s about OpenAI’s data collection and privacy practices. The Florida complaint says ChatGPT provides children with unrestricted access to “harmful information” about eating disorders and self-harm. By concealing these risks and promoting ChatGPT as safe, OpenAI misled Florida residents and the general public with a dangerous product, the complaint says.
OpenAI said in a statement that it believes minors need significant protections around AI and has worked to provide them to parents and teens. An OpenAI spokesperson said: “Losing a child is the most devastating tragedy that can happen to a family, and we know that no words can come close to addressing the pain of such a loss.” “We are committed to correcting this.”
Reining in artificial intelligence
While this is the first state lawsuit against OpenAI regarding child safety, several state governments are taking action on AI. California, Illinois and New York have created new laws to rein in how AI companies operate.
The lawsuit filed in Florida is a civil case, which would result in penalties (money) and court orders rather than criminal charges. Although it is still unclear how the financial penalty will end, Meta and Google have recently been ordered To pay $3 million After a jury found them guilty of creating addictive social media apps; In a separate case, he was dead He was ordered to pay $375 million On charges of child exploitation. These cases deal with social media, not artificial intelligence, but these legal strategies used against big tech companies could provide a legal roadmap moving forward.
Despite growing state and local backlash against AI, the Trump administration The latest plan for artificial intelligence It shows that she wants the federal government to be responsible for setting the rules regarding technology. The White House has been vocal in its support for AI infrastructure projects, including AI Boom Data center construction projects All over the United States.
But experts warn that relaxing regulations to allow AI companies to build faster could have disastrous effects on the environment, the economy and society as a whole.
