Florida’s attorney general said on Tuesday that the state had opened a criminal investigation into ChatGPT and its parent company, OpenAI, based on a review of messages between the chatbot and the man accused of killing two people at Florida State University last year.
The attorney general, James Uthmeier, a Republican, said the messages suggested that ChatGPT “offered significant advice to the shooter before he committed such heinous crimes.” He pointed to several exchanges, including ones in which the suspect asked about a gun’s power at short range and which ammunition might be used for it.
“My prosecutors have looked at this, and they’ve told me if it was a person on the other end of the screen, we would be charging them with murder,” Mr. Uthmeier said at a news conference in Tampa.
Two adults died and six other people, including at least one student, were injured last April at the shooting near the student union at Florida State, a public university with an enrollment of more than 43,000 in Tallahassee. The suspect, Phoenix Ikner, who was then a 20-year-old student at the university, faces multiple charges of murder and attempted murder and is in jail awaiting trial.
Prosecutors have gathered as evidence messages that the suspect exchanged with ChatGPT. On the day of the shooting, he asked the chatbot how the country would react to a shooting at Florida State and when the busiest time was at the student union, according to messages obtained by The New York Times through a public records request.
Mr. Uthmeier first announced on April 9 that his office would be opening an investigation into OpenAI and ChatGPT. On Tuesday, he said a civil investigation that his office initiated early this month into the company’s potential liability would continue, along with the criminal investigation.
OpenAI said in a statement earlier this month that it would cooperate with the attorney general’s office. “We build ChatGPT to understand people’s intent and respond in a safe and appropriate way, and we continue improving our technology,” the company said at the time. It did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Tuesday.
(The Times has sued OpenAI, claiming copyright infringement; OpenAI has denied the claims.)
Mr. Uthmeier acknowledged on Tuesday that OpenAI is a company, not a person, and said that exploring potential criminal culpability against the company would be novel legal territory.
But he also said that he had a duty to find out whether “human beings may have been involved in the design, management and operation” of the chatbot to the point that it would “warrant criminal liability.” His office plans to subpoena OpenAI for records, including policies and internal training documents regarding the possibility of users threatening harm to themselves or others, he said.
Mr. Uthmeier was named attorney general by Gov. Ron DeSantis last year and is running for a full term this year.
Mr. DeSantis, a fellow Republican, has championed legislation reining in the power of artificial intelligence, a position that has put him at odds with the White House’s more pro-A.I. approach. The governor has called on state lawmakers to set guardrails for the use of A.I. in a special session next week.
Patricia Mazzei is the lead reporter for The Times in Miami, covering Florida and Puerto Rico.
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