Florida Attorney General James Uthmeier on Monday sued OpenAI and CEO Sam Altman, accusing Altman of leading a company that prioritized profits over protecting its users’ safety.
In the 83-page complaint filed in Florida circuit court, the state claimed OpenAI’s rise was backed by “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 state wants to hold Altman “personally liable for the harm he has caused Floridians through his reckless and willful conduct as founder and CEO of OpenAI, including his utter disregard for the risk to human life caused by his firms’ conduct.”
Florida is the first U.S. state to sue the company over safety concerns. Monday’s lawsuit is separate from a criminal investigation Uthmeier opened into OpenAI in April.
OpenAI did not respond to an immediate request for comment. The company has claimed it designs its products with a goal to make them “safe for everyone.” In November, in response to lawsuits over mental health, OpenAI said it had “safeguards in place to help people, especially teens, when conversations turn sensitive.”
Throughout the complaint, filed in the state’s circuit court of the 10th judicial circuit, the State of Florida claimed OpenAI‘s “careless introduction” of ChatGPT had led to an increase in murders and suicides. The suit alleged Florida’s minors have “become addicted to a tool that feigns human compassion to collect their data with no parental oversight.” It cited instances in the past year of the alleged use of ChatGPT to plan a mass shooting at Florida State University in April 2025 and the murders of two graduate students at the University of South Florida in April.
“This litany of harms is driven by Defendants’ insatiable quest to win the AI arms race and amass large fortunes, despite knowing the danger of ChatGPT,” the state wrote in the complaint.
Florida accused OpenAI of four counts of deceptive and unfair trade practices, two counts of negligence, two counts of violating product liability laws, one count of fraudulent misrepresentation and another count of causing a public nuisance. It is seeking civil penalties and court orders demanding OpenAI restrict the data it collects from minors and that it stop “continuing to misrepresent or fail to warn of the risks of ChatGPT.”
“People are getting hurt, parents are getting deceived and they need to pay for it by opening up their checkbooks and changing the program to ensure there are parental controls,” Uthmeimer said at a press conference Monday.
The lawsuit filed by the State of Florida is available at this link. NBC News first reported the lawsuit.
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