Florida’s attorney general sued OpenAI and its CEO Sam Altman, according to a report from NBC News. The suit accuses the company of marketing a product that it knew could harm users. “The rise of OpenAI is attributable to a web of deception and exploitation of users (including Floridians), leveraging their data and security to increase the market value of OpenAI at unacceptable costs,” the complaint states.
The civil suit seeks sanctions and court orders rather than criminal charges. AG James Uthmeier said the lawsuit “seeks to hold Altman personally responsible for the harm he caused Floridians through his reckless and willful conduct as founder and CEO of OpenAI, including his callous disregard for the risk to human life caused by his company’s conduct.” Uthmeier opened a criminal investigation against the company a few months ago, which is still ongoing.
AG James Uthmeier Announces First State Lawsuit Against OpenAI and Sam Altman
— Attorney General James Uthmeier (@AGJamesUthmeier) June 1, 2026
Today’s lawsuit accuses OpenAI of four counts of deceptive and unfair trade practices, two counts of negligence, two counts of violating product liability laws, and one count each of fraudulent misrepresentation and public nuisance. The suit also claims the company’s systems pose a “great danger of addiction, cognitive decline, suicide, violence, and related harm” to users.
OpenAI has not yet responded to the complaint, but has said in the past that it designs its systems with “security at every step” and that it has “safeguards in place to help people, especially teenagers, when conversations become sensitive.” The company also says its systems have been trained to “defuse conversations and guide people toward concrete assistance.”
Unfortunately, real-world events suggest otherwise. The complaint discusses some recent violent incidents involving ChatGPT. A mass shooting descended on Florida State University last year, killing two people and injuring at least six, after he allegedly discussed his plans with ChatGPT.
These allegations suggest the shooter received advice on which firearms to use and how to get media attention from the chatbot. OpenAI claims that it is “not responsible for this terrible crime” and that the chatbot simply “provided factual answers to questions with information that could be widely found in public sources on the Internet.”
Additionally, two University of South Florida students were shot and killed earlier this year. The suspected shooter was also believed to have been in contact with ChatGPT during the planning stages. A complaint filed suggests he was given information on how to hide the bodies from the chatbot.
These are the largest cases in Florida, but similar situations are happening all over the world. There was a mass shooting in British Columbia in February, in which eight people were killed, including children, and dozens more were injured. The alleged shooter was also reportedly in regular contact with ChatGPT and the company actually reported the account for “gun violence activities and planning.” However, OpenAI did not alert the authorities and simply deactivated the account. The alleged shooter created a second profile and continued the conversation, according to another recent lawsuit.
There are also several cases in which ChatGPT has allegedly helped people plan their own suicide. In total, OpenAI faces at least eight lawsuits stemming from incidents of mass violence or self-harm.
Today’s Florida lawsuit even calls on OpenAI and ChatGPT for many of the everyday problems we all encounter with generative AI. The suit argues that the company’s advertisements, which tout the software’s ability to help farmers and other small businesses, “do not reveal that ChatGPT can be wrong, can make errors, or that it can provide false, absurd, or delusional information.”
“ChatGPT’s unreliability is dangerous,” the suit states. Finally, the language criticizes ChatGPT’s notorious propensity for sycophancy and alleges that it is an overt tactic aimed at increasing user engagement. The complaint states that this practice “leads to greater use of the chatbot, more training data for its improvement, and greater market value for OpenAI.”
