Florida Attorney General James Usmayer announced Thursday that his office plans to investigate OpenAI over ChatGPT’s alleged role in last year’s mass shooting.
In April 2025, a gunman opened fire on the Florida State University campus, killing two people and injuring five others. Last week, a lawyer for one of the shooting victims claimed that ChatGPT was used to plan the attack. The victim’s family said they plan to sue OpenAI over the incident.
“AI should advance humanity, not destroy it,” Usmayer said in a statement posted on Usmayer added in the video that subpoenas “are coming” as part of the investigation.
ChatGPT has been linked to an increase in deaths and violent incidents, including murders, suicides, and shootings, further raising concerns about the emergence of what psychologists call “AI psychosis,” paranoia that is reinforced, facilitated, or deepened by communication with chatbots.
For example, a Wall Street Journal investigation found that Stein-Eric Solberg, a man with a history of mental health issues, murdered his mother and was in regular contact with ChatGPT before killing himself last year. The chatbot often seemed to reinforce the paranoid thinking that consumed him to the point of murder-suicide.
When asked for comment by TechCrunch, an OpenAI spokesperson issued the following statement: “Every week, more than 900 million people use ChatGPT to improve their daily lives by learning new skills, navigating complex health systems, and more. Our ongoing safety efforts , we continue to play an important role in supporting scientific research and discovery, as well as delivering these benefits to everyday people. We are building ChatGPT to understand people’s intentions and respond in a safe and appropriate manner, and we will continue to improve our technology.”
The Florida investigation is a series of bad luck for OpenAI. A New Yorker profile on Sam Altman published earlier this week showed growing criticism and dissatisfaction within the company and among investors, even quoting a Microsoft executive saying, “I think there’s a small but real chance that he will ultimately be remembered as a fraudster on the level of Bernie Madoff or Sam Bankman Fried.” Meanwhile, Stargate-related projects in the UK have reportedly been forced to pause due to high energy costs and regulations.
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