▶ Watch Video: Why Florida is suing OpenAI and its CEO Sam Altman
On its parental resource page, OpenAI says ChatGPT is built with safety in mind.
“Not so,” according to a lawsuit filed by Florida State Attorney General James Uthmeier on Monday. The phrase was accompanied by a screenshot of an OpenAI post about safety and transparency at the start of the complaint.
Florida is the first state to sue OpenAI and CEO Sam Altman, alleging the company prioritized profit and speed over user safety and that the harms caused by ChatGPT “are substantial and outweigh any benefits of ChatGPT use.”
“People are getting hurt, parents are getting deceived, and they need to pay for it,” Uthmeier said in a press conference Monday morning.
In an 83-page suit, Uthmeier says that OpenAI failed to provide warnings about the risks of ChatGPT, which the suit claims can cause addiction and behavioral harm, and said the company could have used alternative designs to minimize harms by the chatbot.
The suit says the company either knew or should have known that its design encourages self-harm and violence, among other things harmful to Floridians — particularly children and teens. It alleges Altman knew the dangers of ChatGPT, but ignored them.
“The threat of ChatGPT to Floridians (and humanity) is not lost on either OpenAI or Altman,” the suit reads.
The lawsuit alleges that OpenAI is driven by an “insatiable quest to win the AI arms race and amass large fortunes, despite knowing the danger of ChatGPT.” It claims the company leverages user data to boost its market value “at unacceptable costs” and that the rise of the company is “attributable to a web of deceit and the exploitation of users.”
The suit lays out several cases where ChatGPT was linked to incidents with devastating consequences, such as in the death of Adam Raine, a 16-year-old who died by suicide after extensive conversations with ChatGPT where he expressed suicidal thoughts. The chatbot wrote his suicide note for him, according to the suit.
“ChatGPT did not simply respond to Adam. It promoted and aided his suicide, volunteering information that would assist in his death,” the suit reads.
The lawsuit also pointed to the shooting last April at Florida State University, where two people were killed and several others wounded after an FSU student opened fire on campus. The suspect had asked ChatGPT how many shooting victims it would take to garner media attention and the busiest time at the FSU student union, where the shooting took place, according to chat logs shared by the Florida State Attorney’s Office with CBS News in April.
In April, Florida opened up a criminal investigation into OpenAI after determining the suspect was offered “significant advice” by ChatGPT before the shooting. That same month, a man accused of killing two University of South Florida graduate students was linked to ChatGPT after asking what would happen if someone was “put in a black garbage bag and thrown in a dumpster.”
In his press briefing, Uthmeier also referenced a mass shooting in Canada earlier this year. The shooter had long conversations with ChatGPT about scenarios involving gun violence before carrying out the attack, according to a lawsuit filed in April by the families of the victims.
“Today we’re going to send a message to Open AI,” Uthmeier said in his Monday morning press briefing. “Get ready for a fight, and there’s not one more important than this right now.”
In a statement to CBS News, OpenAI said it has built safety for minors into its products, like age protection tools, a more protective experience specifically for minors and parental tools to monitor their child’s use of AI.
“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,” the company said. It also said AI is a “new and powerful technology” and that minors need “significant protection.”
“We know pointing to this work will not bring a child back, but we’re committed to getting this right,” the statement said.