The US state of Florida has filed a lawsuit towards OpenAI and Sam Altman, alleging the tech large and its CEO put revenue over public security with its flagship synthetic intelligence (AI) product, ChatGPT.
The lawsuit, filed in Florida state courtroom on Monday native time by Florida’s legal professional common James Uthmeier, is without doubt one of the most vital enforcement actions introduced by a state legal professional towards an AI firm to this point.
It comes as OpenAI and different massive tech corporations are embroiled in a rising variety of authorized instances associated to the alleged hurt their merchandise have induced.
Six key components
The grievance opens with a screenshot of OpenAI’s personal parental-control web page, which states that ChatGPT was “constructed with security in thoughts”. Then, in a standalone paragraph, the State solutions with two phrases: “Not so”.
This alerts the central allegation of the case: that OpenAI offered ChatGPT to the general public as secure and dependable, whereas understanding it may trigger severe hurt
Extra particularly, there are six key themes to Florida’s case towards OpenAI. The primary is that the corporate engaged in misleading security advertising and marketing, assuring dad and mom the platform is secure for teenage use, whereas not clearly disclosing that ChatGPT may be flawed.
Second, regardless of OpenAI’s advertising and marketing, ChatGPT is unreliable. A 2025 study, for instance, discovered AI assistants, reminiscent of ChatGPT, misrepresent the information roughly 45% of the time. Equally, regardless of advertising and marketing suggesting ChatGPT can deal with monetary affairs, ChatGPT has failed in assembly fundamental accounting requirements and provided incorrect tax advice to users.
The third ingredient of the case is the public security risk. The hazard to younger individuals particularly is illustrated by the tragic story of Adam Raine, a 16-year-old who died by suicide in April 2025 after engaging in lengthy conversations with ChatGPT. When Adam expressed suicidal ideas, ChatGPT responded that it “gained’t attempt to speak you out of your emotions”. It helped Adam plan a “stunning suicide” and even provided to write down his suicide be aware for him.
Why would a product behave this manner? As a result of, Uthmeier argues, it was constructed to.
OpenAI designed ChatGPT to be extremely agreeable, to say “sure” roughly ten instances as typically as “no”, according to a Washington Post review of 47,000 conversations. This types the fourth ingredient of the case – business exploitation by means of sycophancy. In different phrases, ChatGPT optimistically parrots again customers’ responses with a purpose to to control them into deeper conversations, no matter reality or security.
However based on the lawsuit, even peculiar use carries a value: it weakens individuals’s mind exercise and significant considering expertise (often known as cognitive atrophy). That is the fifth ingredient of the case.
The sixth and remaining ingredient is information – particularly, the information of Samuel Altman. In accordance with Uthmeier, since at the least 2023, OpenAI’s personal paperwork warned that the mannequin may coach individuals on committing crimes, however Altman overruled the protection employees.
These six components paint an image of a product marketed as secure, engineered to be addictive, and identified by its personal makers to be harmful – but offered to us, anyway.
Altman is on the centre of that image. The grievance reconstructs his profession and reaches for an April 2026 New Yorker investigation and testimony from the recent legal battle between Elon Musk and OpenAI to depict a person, who in Uthmeier’s telling, repeatedly selected velocity over security.
That’s the reason Uthmeier is asking the courtroom to carry Altman personally accountable for “his utter disregard for the chance to human life”.
Pay for previous harms
Uthmeier is asking the courtroom to declare that OpenAI broke the regulation, then to order the corporate to cease – completely – its illegal practices.
He desires the corporate barred from gathering kids’s information with out parental consent and the safeguards that ought to include it, and barred from misrepresenting or staying silent about ChatGPT’s dangers.
On high of the injunctions, the state is searching for civil penalties of as much as US$10,000 per violation for OpenAI’s alleged wilful violation of the the Florida Misleading and Unfair Commerce Practices Act. Uthmeier stated penalties may total billions of {dollars}.
In different phrases: pay for the previous harms and alter the product going ahead.
In a press release to The Dialog, an OpenAI spokesperson pointed to the corporate’s “trade main protections and insurance policies” concerning consumer security.
Particularly we constructed security for minors immediately into our merchandise, together with a extra protecting expertise particularly for minors, an age prediction device, defaulting customers whose age we aren’t assured into our extra protecting expertise, and giving dad and mom instruments to observe their youngsters use of AI.
Including to a rising pile
This lawsuit is a big improvement, however it has not arrived in a vacuum.
Throughout the US, the courts are filling with instances accusing tech corporations of harming younger individuals. In April, for instance, Uthmeier launched a prison investigation into OpenAI over the chatbot’s alleged function in a capturing at Florida State College.
Some juries have began to aspect with the plaintiffs.
In March 2026, for instance, a New Mexico jury hit Meta with a US$375 million penalty in a child safety case. Days later, a jury in Los Angeles discovered Meta and Google liable in a landmark trial over social media dependancy.
This case rides the identical present. But it surely broadens the scope by alleging Altman himself needs to be personally accountable.
Uthmeier is demanding a trial by jury.
This text is republished from The Conversation underneath a Inventive Commons license. Learn the original article.
