Sam Altman disregarded human life, Florida tells OpenAI court<\/p>\n
The US state of Florida has filed a lawsuit against OpenAI and Sam Altman, alleging the tech giant and its CEO put profit over public safety with its flagship artificial intelligence (AI) product, ChatGPT.<\/p>\n
The lawsuit<\/a>, filed in Florida state court on Monday local time by Florida\u2019s attorney general James Uthmeier, is one of the most significant enforcement actions brought by a state attorney against an AI<\/a> company to date.<\/p>\n It comes as OpenAI and other big tech companies are embroiled in a growing number of legal cases related to the alleged harm their products have caused.<\/p>\n Also Read: \u00a0Claude Mythos Preview: When AI Turns Fraud Into an Industry of Fear<\/a><\/p>\n AdvertismentFollow on WhatsAppThe Probe, on WhatsApp.<\/p>\n \n Our stories, the moment they publish \u2014 straight to your chat. No algorithm deciding what you see.\n <\/p>\n Six key elements<\/p>\n The complaint opens with a screenshot of OpenAI\u2019s own parental-control page, which states that ChatGPT was \u201cbuilt with safety in mind\u201d. Then, in a standalone paragraph, the State answers with two words: \u201cNot so\u201d.<\/p>\n This signals the central allegation of the case: that Sam Altman and OpenAI sold ChatGPT to the public as safe and reliable, while knowing it could cause serious harm<\/p>\n More specifically, there are six key themes to Florida\u2019s case against OpenAI. The first is that the company engaged in deceptive safety marketing, assuring parents the platform is safe for teenage use, while not clearly disclosing that ChatGPT can be wrong.<\/p>\n Second, despite OpenAI\u2019s marketing, ChatGPT is unreliable. A 2025 study<\/a>, for example, found AI assistants, such as ChatGPT, misrepresent the news roughly 45% of the time. Similarly, despite marketing suggesting ChatGPT can handle financial affairs, ChatGPT has failed in meeting basic accounting standards and provided incorrect tax advice to users<\/a>.<\/p>\n The third element of the case is the public safety threat. The danger to young people in particular is illustrated by the tragic story of Adam Raine, a 16-year-old who died by suicide in April 2025 after engaging<\/a> in long conversations with ChatGPT. When Adam expressed suicidal thoughts, ChatGPT responded<\/a> that it \u201cwon\u2019t try to talk you out of your feelings\u201d. It helped Adam plan a \u201cbeautiful suicide\u201d and even offered to write his suicide<\/a> note for him.<\/p>\n Why would a product behave this way? Because, Uthmeier argues, it was built to.<\/p>\n Also Read: \u00a0Gurugram Parents Allege Cyber Murder of Son, Await Justice<\/a><\/p>\n OpenAI designed ChatGPT to be highly agreeable, to say \u201cyes\u201d roughly ten times as often as \u201cno\u201d, according to a Washington Post review of 47,000 conversations<\/a>. This forms the fourth element of the case \u2013 commercial exploitation through sycophancy. In other words, ChatGPT optimistically parrots back users\u2019 responses in order to to manipulate them into deeper conversations, regardless of truth or safety.<\/p>\n But according to the lawsuit, even ordinary use carries a cost: it weakens people\u2019s brain activity and critical thinking skills (also known as cognitive atrophy). This is the fifth element of the case.<\/p>\n The sixth and final element is knowledge \u2013 specifically, the knowledge of Sam Altman. According to Uthmeier, since at least 2023, OpenAI\u2019s own documents warned that the model could coach people on committing crimes, but Sam Altman overruled the safety staff.<\/p>\n These six elements paint a picture of a product marketed as safe, engineered to be addictive, and known by its own makers to be dangerous \u2013 yet sold to us, anyway.<\/p>\n Sam Altman is at the centre of that picture. The complaint reconstructs his career and reaches for an\u00a0April 2026 New Yorker investigation<\/a> and testimony from the recent legal battle<\/a> between Elon Musk and OpenAI to depict a man, who in Uthmeier\u2019s telling, repeatedly chose speed over safety.<\/p>\n That is why Uthmeier is asking the court to hold Altman personally liable for \u201chis utter disregard for the risk to human life\u201d.<\/p>\n Also Read: \u00a0Jeff Bezos Faces Criticism Over The Washington Post Staff Reductions<\/a><\/p>\n Pay for past harms<\/p>\n Uthmeier is asking the court to declare that OpenAI broke the law, then to order the company to stop \u2013 permanently \u2013 its unlawful practices.<\/p>\n He wants the company barred from collecting children\u2019s data without parental consent and the safeguards that should come with it, and barred from misrepresenting or staying silent about ChatGPT\u2019s risks.<\/p>\n On top of the injunctions, the state is seeking civil penalties of up to US$10,000 per violation for OpenAI\u2019s alleged wilful violation of the the Florida Deceptive and Unfair Trade Practices Act. Uthmeier said penalties could total<\/a> billions of dollars.<\/p>\n In other words: pay for the past harms and change the product going forward.<\/p>\n In a statement to The Conversation, an OpenAI spokesperson pointed to the company\u2019s \u201cindustry leading protections and policies\u201d regarding user safety.<\/p>\n In particular we built safety for minors directly into our products, including a more protective experience specifically for minors, an age prediction tool, defaulting users whose age we are not confident into our more protective experience, and giving parents tools to monitor their kids use of AI.<\/p>\n Adding to a growing pile<\/p>\n This lawsuit is a significant development, but it has not arrived in a vacuum.<\/p>\n Across the US, the courts are filling with cases accusing tech companies of harming young people. In April, for example, Uthmeier launched<\/a> a criminal investigation into OpenAI over the chatbot\u2019s alleged role in a shooting at Florida State University.<\/p>\n Some juries have started to side with the plaintiffs.<\/p>\n In March 2026, for example, a New Mexico jury hit Meta with a US$375 million penalty in a child safety case<\/a>. Days later, a jury in Los Angeles found Meta<\/a> and Google liable<\/a> in a landmark trial over social media addiction.<\/p>\n This case rides the same current. But it broadens the scope by alleging Altman himself should be personally responsible.<\/p>\n Uthmeier is demanding a trial by jury.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Sam Altman disregarded human life, Florida tells OpenAI court The US state of Florida has filed a lawsuit…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":60318,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[34775,1604,4788,4989,25,22023,580,34778,21002,15549,34776,34777,17071,140,8776,34404,33934,8777,1122,33857,157,370,34774,34773],"class_list":["post-60317","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-openai","tag-adam-raine","tag-ai-chatbot","tag-ai-regulation","tag-ai-safety","tag-artificial-intelligence","tag-artificial-intelligence-lawsuit","tag-chatgpt","tag-chatgpt-dangers","tag-chatgpt-suicide","tag-child-safety","tag-cognitive-atrophy","tag-deceptive-marketing","tag-dow-jones","tag-elon-musk","tag-florida-attorney-general","tag-florida-deceptive-and-unfair-trade-practices-act","tag-florida-lawsuit","tag-james-uthmeier","tag-meta","tag-minors","tag-openai","tag-sam-altman","tag-sycophancy","tag-teen-suicide"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/60317","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=60317"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/60317\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/60318"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=60317"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=60317"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=60317"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}