Florida attorney general investigates OpenAI: ChatGPT may have helped plan university shooting

Florida's attorney general has announced a formal investigation into OpenAI. The trigger was a tragedy on the campus of Florida State University: last April, an unidentified gunman opened fire on students, killing two people and wounding five more. According to available information, the attacker made heavy use of ChatGPT before the attack, and investigators intend to determine whether the company could have prevented the tragedy.

The incident took place at one of the largest universities in the American South, Florida State University in Tallahassee. The April shooting immediately set off nationwide debate about campus safety. When it emerged that the attacker had allegedly used ChatGPT to plan the attack, the debate moved to a new level: the responsibility of technology companies for the actions of their users was now in question.

The family of one of the victims has announced its intention to file a civil lawsuit against OpenAI. According to their lawyers, the company built a product that could be used to cause harm and did not take sufficient measures to prevent such a scenario. Now the state is joining the case: the attorney general's investigation is official in nature and may have legal consequences for the company.

OpenAI has not yet commented on the start of the investigation. The company has long faced criticism of its products' safeguards: despite numerous filters, researchers and journalists periodically demonstrate ways to get potentially dangerous content out of ChatGPT. The key question for investigators is whether the company knew about such risks and what it did about them.

Legally, the case is not simple. In the US, Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act traditionally shields internet platforms from liability for user content. But ChatGPT is not a passive platform: it generates content itself in response to prompts. That nuance opens a legal opening that the plaintiffs are trying to exploit. Experts disagree on whether Section 230 applies to generative AI systems.

The Florida investigation stands out among other attempts to hold AI developers accountable: the scale of the tragedy and the degree of the AI system's alleged involvement in preparing the violence are unprecedented. If investigators establish a direct link between ChatGPT and the planning of the attack, the precedent could change the regulatory landscape for the entire industry.

For OpenAI, this is a serious challenge. The company actively presents itself as a builder of safe AI and works with regulators around the world. A criminal investigation at the state level can cause reputational damage as painful as financial penalties. The victim's family's civil lawsuit, if the court accepts it, would set a precedent for a wave of similar cases.

The question of AI developers' liability for the criminal use of their systems is becoming one of the key issues for the future regulation of the industry.