Sam Altman faces new lawsuit as Florida AG sues OpenAI over ChatGPT safety failures

Weeks after a jury dismissed Elon Musk’s lawsuit against OpenAI’s corporate restructuring, Florida’s attorney general filed the first state-led lawsuit against the company and its CEO. 

ChatGPT has been accused of facilitating mass shootings, encouraging suicide, and getting children addicted. 

Florida sues OpenAI and founder Altman

Florida Attorney General James Uthmeier announced the first U.S. state-led lawsuit

 against OpenAI and Sam Altman, claiming the company knowingly released and aggressively marketed ChatGPT to the public while concealing serious risks.

Uthmeier referred to the popular LLM as a “dangerous product” at a Monday press conference. In the 83-page complaint, filed in Florida’s 10th Judicial Circuit, OpenAI and Altman are accused of prioritizing speed to market and commercial gain over user safety while falsely assuring users the product was safe.

The lawsuit goes further to state that Altman has an “utter disregard” for the risk his product poses to human life.

In one of the cases mentioned in the lawsuit, a gunman responsible for the deaths of two people used ChatGPT while planning the attack. Six others were wounded during the incident that took place at Florida State University in April 2025. 

The shooter apparently asked the chatbot how many victims it would take to attract media coverage and when the campus student union was busiest. OpenAI has previously addressed this case saying that ChatGPT simply provided the gunman with “factual responses” and that the information could have been found easily across public sources on the internet. 

Two University of South Florida doctoral students were killed in a separate case. The man responsible asked ChatGPT what would happen if a human body were placed in a garbage bag and discarded in a dumpster.

The suit alleges that ChatGPT “promoted and aided” the suicide of 16 year old California teenager, Adam Raine. The chatbot volunteered information that would assist in his death and even wrote his suicide note.

Beyond tragic events, Florida is also accusing ChatGPT of collecting data from minors without the necessary parental supervision, leading to “behavioral addiction and cognitive harm” that is actively downplayed by OpenAI. 

Penalties for Altman and his company could reach up to billions of dollars.

Altman recently appeared in court for Musk’s lawsuit trial, which wrapped up in May after three weeks of testimony in Oakland. All of Musk’s claims were rejected after less than two hours of deliberation. 

Before that, Altman faced a separate personal lawsuit from his sister, who accused him of childhood sexual abuse. 

What has OpenAI said about Florida’s lawsuit?

OpenAI has pushed back on the allegations without directly addressing individual claims in the complaint. The company claims that it has built-in safety features for younger users, including an age prediction tool, more protective experience for minors, and parental monitoring controls.

Families of victims from a mass shooting at a school in Tumbler Ridge, Canada, earlier this year have also sued the company. Altman apologized for banning the suspect’s account over problematic usage but failing to alert the police.

Google was recently sued by the father of a Florida man who alleged its Gemini chatbot fueled a delusional spiral that led to his son’s suicide. Character.AI has also been accused of aiding suicides and mental health crises among minors. The company was forced to settle multiple lawsuits in January from families of its victims.

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