GoKawiilIn April 2025, a man opened fire on Florida State University's campus, killing two adults and injuring six others. The shooter faces charges of murder and attempted murder. Now, Florida officials are investigating OpenAI, the creator of the chatbot ChatGPT, to determine whether the company should be criminally held responsible as well.
Florida Attorney General James Uthmeier said in an announcement on April 9 that officials "learned that ChatGPT may likely have been used to assist the murderer" in the shooting.
"As big tech rolls out these technologies, they should not, they cannot, put our safety and security at risk," Uthmeier added.
On Tuesday, Uthmeier launched a criminal investigation into OpenAI and ChatGPT.
(Disclosure: Ziff Davis, CNET's parent company, filed a lawsuit against OpenAI in 2025, alleging it infringed Ziff Davis copyrights in training and operating its AI systems.)
Although ChatGPT and other chatbots have been involved in lawsuits over alleged involvement in deaths and harm, this marks the first time that ChatGPT and OpenAI are the subject of a criminal investigation.
An OpenAI representative didn't immediately respond to a request for comment.
"Last year's mass shooting at Florida State University was a tragedy, but ChatGPT is not responsible for this terrible crime," a spokesperson for the company told NPR.
The spokesperson said that ChatGPT "provided factual responses to questions with information that could be found broadly across public sources on the internet, and it did not encourage or promote illegal or harmful activity."
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