The state of Florida has filed a lawsuit against OpenAI and its chief executive \u2013 accusing the company of offering children guidance on self-harm and providing information helping school shooters and other criminals.<\/p>\n
Florida<\/a> Attorney General James Uthmeier filed the lawsuit \u2013 marking the first state to take legal action against the firm \u2013 alleging the company aggressively marketed AI chatbot ChatGPT<\/a> while concealing serious risks.<\/p>\n “People are getting hurt, parents are getting deceived, and they \u2060need to pay for it,” Mr Uthmeier \u2060told reporters at a news conference.<\/p>\n OpenAI<\/a> said in a statement that work is continuously being carried out to strengthen safeguards and that ChatGPT is used by “hundreds of millions of people every day for legitimate purposes”.<\/p>\n The legal filing cites a shooting \u200bat a university in Tallahassee<\/a> last year, as well as a number of \u200cevents in other states where ChatGPT allegedly provided information to people who went on to commit violence.<\/p>\n Chief executive Sam Altman<\/a> is named personally, Mr Uthmeier said, because he has been “very central” to pushing some of the alleged harmful features on ChatGPT.<\/p>\n “OpenAI and Altman ignored internal and external safety warnings, put children at great risk, and allowed a dangerous product to reach millions of Floridians,” he said.<\/p>\n Warning: This article contains references to suicide and violence that some readers may find distressing<\/p>\n OpenAI said its models repeatedly encouraged individuals to seek real-world support, including from mental health professionals. The company also said it has co-operated with law enforcement.<\/p>\n “ChatGPT is a general-purpose tool used by hundreds of millions of people every day for legitimate purposes,” the company statement said. “We work continuously to strengthen our safeguards to detect harmful intent, limit misuse, and respond appropriately when safety risks arise.”<\/p>\n The company has said it trains its models to refuse \u200crequests that could “meaningfully enable violence,” and notifies law enforcement when conversations suggest “an imminent and credible risk of harm to others,” with mental health experts helping assess borderline cases.<\/p>\n Mass shootings and suicide cited in lawsuit<\/p>\n AI companies are \u200bfacing a growing wave of lawsuits accusing them of failing to prevent \u200bchatbot interactions that have allegedly contributed to self-harm, mental illness and violence.<\/p>\n OpenAI is \u2060also facing a lawsuit filed by the family of a man killed in the Florida State University shooting<\/a>, claiming the gunman was aided by ChatGPT in planning the \u2060attack. Mr Uthmeier announced in April that he was launching a criminal investigation into ChatGPT’s role in the \u2060shooting, in which two people were killed, after prosecutors reviewed the chat logs \u200bbetween the alleged shooter and the bot.<\/p>\n In another case, prosecutors have said a man charged with killing two University of South Florida doctoral students had asked ChatGPT what would happen if a human body were put in a rubbish bag and thrown in a dumpster, days before they went missing.<\/p>\n In April, family members of victims of \u200bone of Canada’s deadliest mass shootings<\/a> filed a group of lawsuits against OpenAI \u200band Altman.<\/p>\n