Florida authorities ask court to block OpenAI’s ChatGPT over safety issues

The Republican-led US state says the AI should be blocked from development until safeguards are put in place.

Authorities in Florida have asked a state court to stop OpenAI from further developing ChatGPT until it can impose a series of guardrails meant to protect users and the general public.

“Stop calling it safe. Stop pretending it’s human. Stop selling it to kids,” Florida Attorney General James Uthmeier said in a statement posted on X announcing the court case on Monday.

Uthmeier, a Republican, served as the chief of staff for fellow Republican Florida Governor Ron DeSantis until 2025.

The call for regulation of ChatGPT and other artificial intelligence (AI) tools contradicts the viewpoint of the administration of United States President Donald Trump, who has balked at the idea of introducing guardrails and called warnings “hoaxes”.

Uthmeier said the state was asking for the Florida 10th Judicial Circuit Court in Highlands County to intervene in particular based on recent warnings issued by OpenAI CEO Sam Altman that AI posed a danger to the public if it was not subjected to safeguards.

Humanity could “lose control of the future of AI,” Altman told the United Nations Security Council last week alongside the heads of rival developers Anthropic and Hugging Face, who also called for authorities to step in to guide the industry.

“We ask the court to do what OpenAI will not do for itself: protect Florida families,” Uthmeier said.

The request from Florida follows up on a lawsuit the state filed earlier this year concerning the impact ChatGPT was having on children and others. The state alleged users were being “encouraged” into committing suicide and the AI had “aided and abetted deadly rampages”.

It was one of a growing litany of lawsuits around the country brought by alleged victims of the AI, including families of children who allegedly committed suicide after turning to the chatbot for guidance.

The new filing on Monday adds new reports of harm involving ChatGPT, including incidents where rogue AI bots allegedly broke into rival company Hugging Face, as well as an official health-system database used by Australia. Australian authorities have asked Altman and the CEO of Anthropic, Dario Amodei, to appear before an inquiry in person in that investigation.

The lawsuit filed by Florida asks the court to force OpenAI to stop minors from using ChatGPT; stop giving the chatbot human attributes or advertising it as safe, accurate or reliable; and stop soliciting users to continue engagement after it has answered their queries. Further development on the AI model, the state says, should stop until a third party can approve guardrails.