dailyloe.com – Florida Attorney General James Uthmeier announced a criminal investigation into OpenAI on Tuesday. He alleged the company’s chatbot advised a man accused of killing two people in a shooting at Florida State University last year. The chatbot reportedly suggested which ammunition to use and where and when to strike.
“The chatbot advised the shooter on what type of gun to use, on which ammo went with which gun, on whether or not a gun would be useful at short range,” Uthmeier said at a news conference Tuesday. “If it was a person on the other end of that screen, we would be charging them with murder.”
Uthmeier’s office sent subpoenas to OpenAI on Tuesday. The subpoenas asked for the company’s policies on responding when users make threats to harm others during ChatGPT conversations, according to a statement. The criminal investigation follows a civil inquiry Uthmeier announced this month.
“Last year’s mass shooting at Florida State University was a tragedy, but ChatGPT is not responsible for this terrible crime,” OpenAI spokesperson Kate Waters said. “After learning of the incident, we identified a ChatGPT account believed to be associated with the suspect and proactively shared this information with law enforcement.”
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,” Waters said. The Washington Post has a content partnership with OpenAI.
Two people were killed and six others injured in the shooting at Florida State in Tallahassee last April. A college student opened fire on campus, authorities said at the time. The suspected shooter, Phoenix Ikner, was shot by police and later hospitalized. Ikner has been charged with multiple counts of murder and attempted murder.
“ChatGPT advised the shooter on what time of day would be appropriate for the shooting to interact with more people and where on campus would be the place to encounter a higher population,” Uthmeier said at the Tuesday news conference. OpenAI faces intense scrutiny from law enforcement and elected officials after authorities alleged that the shooter in Florida and a suspect in a February mass shooting in Canada that killed two people used ChatGPT.
