—
The state of Florida is taking off the kid gloves and slapping artificial intelligence kingpin OpenAI with a monster lawsuit.
Florida Attorney General James Uthmeier filed an 83-page civil suit on Monday against OpenAI and CEO Sam Altman. Florida charges OpenAI with building an unregulated “wealth machine” that pushes a highly addictive, dangerous product directly to children while ignoring a ticking time bomb of internal safety warnings.
“The rise of OpenAI is attributable to a web of deceit and the exploitation of users (including Floridians), leveraging their data and safety to boost OpenAI’s market value at unacceptable costs,” the lawsuit states.
The blockbuster lawsuit accuses OpenAI of everything from negligence to creating a massive public nuisance. It claims the chatbot acts as a digital accomplice, alleging it was used by unhinged killers to plan a horrific mass shooting at Florida State University and a double homicide at the University of South Florida.
A company spokesperson for OpenAI argued the bot only spat out public, factual internet data and touted “industry-leading” guardrails meant to protect teens and flag users in mental distress.
Florida’s lawsuit is just the latest wound for the $850 billion company, which is currently fighting a war on multiple legal fronts.
Grieving families have already slapped the company with seven individual wrongful death lawsuits, claiming ChatGPT acted as a virtual “suicide coach” that drove loved ones into deadly delusions.
Meanwhile, traditional media and famous creatives are out for blood over what they call the greatest heist in internet history. The New York Times, as well as literary heavyweights like George R.R. Martin, John Grisham, and David Baldacci, have sued OpenAI for allegedly vacuuming up millions of copyrighted articles and books without paying a dime to train its AI models. OpenAI has defended itself by claiming fair use.
If that weren’t enough, a swarm of consumer class actions is pounding the company for allegedly scraping the private data and social media logs of millions of unsuspecting everyday users — including children.
There’s also the ongoing feud between Tesla titan Elon Musk and Altman. Musk recently dragged Altman into a California court, accusing his former partner of “stealing a charity” by flipping OpenAI from a benevolent, open-source nonprofit into a greedy subsidiary of Microsoft. Musk even launched a $97.4 billion hostile takeover attempt, which Altman laughed off on social media by offering to buy X back for pennies.
While a jury tossed Musk’s suit last month on a ticking-clock technicality, he is already planning an appeal.
If Florida wins the lawsuit, it won’t just hinder OpenAI’s upcoming multi-billion-dollar IPO — it could pull the plug on Silicon Valley’s unregulated actions.
