Florida has become the first US state to sue OpenAI over the security and design of ChatGPT, adding to the wave of existing lawsuits against the company.
According to the lawsuit (PDF) filed Monday by Florida Attorney General James Uthmeier, OpenAI has built “a web of deception and exploitation of users, including Floridians.” Florida alleges that the company violated state laws against deceptive or unfair trade practices to increase its market value — and profits — over the safety of its users.
Florida isn’t buying OpenAI’s promise to build safely, as the beginning of the complaint shows.
A federal lawsuit against OpenAI and its CEO, Sam Altman, says they ignored warnings, both inside and outside the company, about the many dangers AI poses to its users. Florida alleges that OpenAI misrepresented ChatGPT’s reliability, suitability for children and encouraged long-term use that led to decreased user awareness.
(Disclosure: Ziff Davis, CNET’s parent company, in 2025 filed a lawsuit against OpenAI, alleging that it infringed Ziff Davis’ copyrights in training and using its AI programs.)
The case comes as Florida is conducting a criminal investigation into whether ChatGPT played a role in a mass shooting at Florida State University last year that left two dead and six injured. In that case, the shooter allegedly used ChatGPT to plan the attack, including advising on the type of weapon, the time of execution and how to dispose of the bodies.
At the time, OpenAI said: “Last year’s mass shooting at Florida State University was a tragedy, but ChatGPT is not responsible for this heinous crime.”
OpenAI CEO Sam Altman has been indicted in Florida.
There is growing concern about how ChatGPT and other chatbots can engage in human violence and malicious manipulation. Experts have found that chatbots like ChatGPT can struggle to back away from dangerous ideas and are so eager to please that they can actually provide incorrect information, a problem called sycophancy.
Another concern for lawmakers and technology watchdog groups is over OpenAI’s data collection and privacy practices. The Florida complaint alleges that ChatGPT provides children with unrestricted access to “harmful information” about eating disorders and self-harm. By hiding these risks and promoting ChatGPT as safe, OpenAI misled Floridians and the general public about a dangerous product, the complaint said.
OpenAI said in a statement that it believes children need important protections from AI and has worked to provide them to parents and young people. “Losing a child is the most painful tragedy that can happen to a family and we know that no words can come close to dealing with the pain of bereavement,” said an OpenAI spokesperson. “We are committed to fixing this.”
Focus on AI
Although this is the first government-led lawsuit against OpenAI regarding child safety, many state governments are taking action on AI. California, Illinois and New York have created new laws to tighten the way AI companies operate.
A Florida lawsuit is a civil damages lawsuit, which can result in punitive (money) and injunctions instead of criminal charges. While it’s unclear how the fines will play out, Meta and Google were recently ordered to pay $3 million after a jury found them guilty of creating addictive social media apps; in another case, Meta was ordered to pay $375 million in child abuse charges. These cases deal with social media, not AI, but these legal strategies used against Big Tech can provide a legal guide forward.
Despite growing national and local backlash against AI, the Trump administration’s new AI plan shows it wants the federal government to be in charge of making rules around the technology. The White House has been outspoken in its support for AI infrastructure projects, including the proliferation of data center construction projects across the US.
But experts warn that loosening rules to allow AI companies to build faster could have disastrous consequences for the environment, the economy and society as a whole.
