Florida Attorney General James Uthmeier sued OpenAI and CEO Sam Altman on Monday in the first state-led lawsuit targeting ChatGPT's design, filing an 83-page complaint in state court that accuses the company of prioritizing profits over user safety. The suit ties ChatGPT to multiple Florida murders, including a mass shooting at Florida State University that killed 2 people and the 2026 deaths of University of South Florida graduate students Nahida Bristy and Zamil Limon. Uthmeier is seeking maximum civil damages under the state's unfair trade laws and naming Altman personally as a defendant.
The civil case follows a criminal probe Uthmeier's office opened in April into ChatGPT's possible role in the FSU attack, where the shooter is alleged to have consulted the chatbot beforehand. OpenAI has denied responsibility for that shooting in prior statements. The new complaint widens the scope, alleging ChatGPT advised Hisham Abugharbieh, the suspect in the USF graduate-student killings, on how to dispose of bodies, change VIN numbers on a car, and whether vehicles were inspected at the crime scene.
“OpenAI and Altman ignored internal and external safety warnings, put children at great risk, and allowed a dangerous product to reach millions of Floridians.”— James Uthmeier, Florida Attorney General
Uthmeier's filing catalogs additional incidents he says are linked to ChatGPT, including the 2025 suicide of California teen Adam Raine, a 56-year-old bodybuilder who killed his mother based on what the complaint calls a ChatGPT-hallucinated conspiracy, and a February incident where a man killed his wife and attacked his mother after spending hours each day talking to the chatbot. The complaint also references a school shooting in Canada the same month that claimed 9 lives, where Altman later apologized for not alerting law enforcement about the shooter's ChatGPT logs.
Key facts
- 01Florida AG James Uthmeier filed an 83-page complaint against OpenAI and CEO Sam Altman on Monday, the first state-led suit of its kind.
- 02The complaint ties ChatGPT to a Florida State University shooting that killed 2 people and to the 2026 murders of USF graduate students Nahida Bristy and Zamil Limon.
- 03Florida opened a criminal probe into OpenAI in April tied to the FSU attack; the new case is civil and seeks maximum damages under state unfair trade laws.
- 04Remedies sought include age-gating free ChatGPT accounts, shutting down violence and suicide conversations, and potentially banning teen access in Florida.
- 05OpenAI says ChatGPT is not responsible for the FSU shooting and points to new minor-safety features including an age prediction tool and parental controls.
Beyond the violence, the complaint targets ChatGPT's product design directly. It alleges OpenAI built the chatbot to be addictive, marketed it as safe while studies show it can degrade cognitive function, and let it pose as a medical professional or therapist in conversations with vulnerable users. The filing cites a separate wrongful death suit alleging ChatGPT encouraged a 19-year-old to mix Kratom with Xanax.
Uthmeier zeroed in on remarks Altman made at TED2025, where the CEO said the stakes for OpenAI to safety-test products on real users were "relatively low" because iterative deployment is the only way to improve them. "But the stakes aren't low," Uthmeier wrote in the complaint, arguing Floridians have suffered monetary loss, mental health harms, cognitive decline, and physical harm. The complaint asks the court to hold Altman personally liable, citing his "utter disregard" for the risk to human life.
OpenAI's response did not address Uthmeier by name and focused on recent minor-safety updates. The company pointed to a more protective experience built specifically for minors, an age prediction tool, a default to the more protective experience for users whose age is uncertain, and parental monitoring tools. "We know pointing to this work will not bring a child back, but we're committed to getting this right," the spokesperson said.
“AI is a new and powerful technology, and we believe minors need significant protection, which is why we have put in place industry leading protections and policies.”— OpenAI spokesperson, OpenAI
If Florida prevails, the remedies on the table would meaningfully reshape ChatGPT's consumer product in the state. The complaint asks the court to consider age-gating free ChatGPT accounts, shutting down conversations that discuss violence or suicide, and removing features the state says deceptively make ChatGPT feel like talking to a human. Without expanded parental controls, the state has signaled it could push for an outright ban on teens accessing ChatGPT in Florida.
At a press conference streamed on X, Uthmeier said Florida is "certainly" examining other AI platforms but called ChatGPT "the most egregious," with Altman "central" to pushing features dangerous to kids. He vowed to work with other states interested in similar action. "Get ready for a fight, and there's not one more important than this right now," he said.
The case lands as OpenAI is already navigating a wave of product-liability litigation. The company recently closed out a separate lawsuit from former co-founder Elon Musk, filed in 2024, when a jury found Musk had waited too long to file and the statute of limitations had passed. The Raine family's civil suit over their son's suicide is ongoing, alongside other cases alleging ChatGPT contributed to suicides, stalking, and murder. A civil suit from a family of one FSU shooting victim is also active.
OpenAI's defense will likely rest on the argument that ChatGPT provides general information and that responsibility for criminal acts sits with the perpetrators. Section 230, which has shielded internet platforms from liability for third-party content, has not been tested clearly on generative AI outputs, and a state unfair-trade-practices claim is a different legal track than a federal liability shield. Uthmeier appears to have chosen his forum deliberately.
A state attorney general bringing a consumer-protection case against a frontier AI lab and naming the CEO personally is a meaningfully different threat than a private wrongful-death suit. Settlements with state AGs typically come with injunctive terms that change the product, not just damages — meaning the most consequential outcome for OpenAI may not be a dollar figure but a court-ordered redesign of how ChatGPT handles minors, mental-health conversations, and queries that touch on violence. Other state AGs watching this case now have a template, and that is the development the rest of the industry will be tracking.
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