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Florida opened a criminal investigation into OpenAI one year after a gunman killed two people at Florida State University in an attack he planned with \u201csignificant advice\u201d from OpenAI\u2019s artificial intelligence tool ChatGPT, the state\u2019s Attorney General James Uthmeier announced on Tuesday.<\/p>\n
The gunman, whom The Daily Wire will not name, relied on ChatGPT to get information on firearms and when the most people would be present at Florida State\u2019s student union, where he opened fire on April 17, 2025, The New York Times reported<\/a>. The attacker also asked ChatGPT if a specific gun would be effective at short range, according to Uthmeier.<\/p>\n \u201cIf this were a person on the other end of the screen, we would be charging them with murder,\u201d the Florida attorney general said. \u201cWe cannot have AI bots that are advising people on how to kill others.\u201d<\/p>\n The criminal investigation will now run alongside a civil investigation into ChatGPT that the Florida attorney general opened earlier this month.<\/p>\n The 20-year-old gunman killed two people and wounded six others in the shooting. He was also a student at Florida State and is the stepson of a sheriff\u2019s deputy in Leon County, Florida, which includes Tallahassee. The gunman, who survived a serious gunshot wound from responding officers, has been charged with multiple counts of murder and attempted murder.<\/p>\n The gunman appeared to be intrigued by whether a mass shooting at Florida State would gain nationwide attention and asked ChatGPT how the country would react to an attack on the campus, according to the Times.<\/p>\n OpenAI, which is led by AI entrepreneur Sam Altman, pushed back on Florida\u2019s decision to open a criminal investigation and said the company \u201cproactively shared this information with law enforcement\u201d after it identified the shooter\u2019s account.<\/p>\n \u201cLast year\u2019s mass shooting at Florida State University was a tragedy, but ChatGPT is not responsible for this terrible crime,\u201d an OpenAI spokeswoman told The Daily Wire.<\/p>\n \u201cWe continue to cooperate with authorities. In this case, 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,\u201d the spokeswoman added.<\/p>\n Uthmeier, a Republican, said at a press conference on Tuesday that he believes government \u201cshould only interfere in business activities when you have significant harm to our people,\u201d adding, \u201cThis is that.\u201d<\/p>\n The criminal investigation will focus on looking into whether OpenAI or any of its employees should face charges over the programming of ChatGPT\u2019s answers.<\/p>\n The Florida State shooter is not the only gunman to rely on ChatGPT for information before opening fire on innocent victims. Earlier this year, a trans-identifying shooter<\/a> in Canada raised warning signs among OpenAI employees for conversations he had with ChatGPT on shooting scenarios months before killing his mother and brother and then going to Tumbler Ridge Secondary School in British Columbia, where he killed another six people, including five children.<\/p>\n The trans-identifying gunman\u2019s messages with ChatGPT in June 2025 resulted in his account getting banned, but OpenAI did not report the conversations to law enforcement, The Wall Street Journal reported. OpenAI tells users that it hands over information to law enforcement \u201cif required to do so to comply with a legal obligation, or in the good faith belief that such action is necessary to comply with a legal obligation.\u201d<\/p>\n Last year, however, Altman said that he wanted a policy passed to allow him to give AI users assurance that their conversations with ChatGPT would never be shared with the government.<\/p>\n \u201cIf I could get one piece of policy passed right now, relative to AI, the thing I would most like, and this is in tension with some of the other things that we\u2019ve talked about, is I\u2019d like there to be a concept of AI privilege,\u201d Altman told<\/a> podcast host Tucker Carlson last September. \u201cWhen you talk to a doctor about your health or a lawyer about your legal problems, the government cannot get that information.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cWe have decided that society has an interest in that being privileged and that a subpoena can\u2019t get that, the government can\u2019t come asking your doctor for it, whatever. I think we should have the same concept for AI,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n