Earlier this month, we got a glimpse of the harrowing conversations that Florida State University school shooting suspect Phoenix Ikner had with ChatGPT before his deadly massacre.
Ikner asked the chatbot how to turn off the safety switch on his weapon, what ammo to use, and even where to find the most people to kill on the university’s campus — horrific queries highlighting how some are already using AI to plan and perpetrate unconscionable crimes.
Now, prosecutors have revealed that the prime suspect in the murder of two University of South Florida doctoral students asked ChatGPT whether to hide a human body in a dumpster.
“What happens if a human has a put [sic] in a black garbage bag and thrown in a dumpster,” 26-year-old Hisham Abugharbieh, who has since been charged with first-degree murder of Zamil Limon and Nahida Bristy, asked the chatbot, as quoted by NBC News.
After ChatGPT told him that it sounded dangerous, Abugharbieh replied with a grim and telling question.
“How would they find out,” he wrote.
The evidence in the case sounds damning. One of the suspect’s roommates saw him loading boxes into a compactor dumpster. A subsequent search revealed items that once belonged to Limon, including a student ID.
Limon’s body was later recovered by investigators inside a heavy duty trash bag — not thrown into a dumpster, but on the side of a bridge that spans Tampa Bay, showing signs of “multiple sharp force injuries,” according to an autopsy.
Bristy’s body has yet to be identified, despite human remains being recovered over the weekend, according to NBC.
Abugharbieh is facing serious charges, including first-degree murder, battery, false imprisonment, and storing remains in unapproved conditions, court documents show.
Investigators have yet to detail a possible motive, but Abugharbieh’s use of ChatGPT sheds light on a worrying new trend. AI chatbot responses to some hair-raising prompts are increasingly showing up in court filings, underlining how ubiquitous the tech has become — and how some perpetrators are frequently leaving a highly incriminating paper trail as a result.
Roughly ten months after the fatal shooting at Florida State University, a horrific school shooting in the rural mining town of Tumbler Ridge, British Columbia, similarly implicated OpenAI. The perpetrator, 18-year-old Jesse Van Rootselaar, used ChatGPT in disturbing ways before the killings. While her account was flagged last year, OpenAI never notified law enforcement, a failure to act that has resulted in a barrage of lawsuits.
All the negative press has clearly rattled OpenAI. In a bizarre blog post this week, the company attempted to take a reassuring tone, vowing to “learn, improve and course-correct” following “mass shootings, threats against public officials, bombing attempts, and attacks on communities and individuals.”
More on ChatGPT murders: OpenAI Hit With Barrage of Lawsuits Over Failure to Report School Shooter Before Massacre
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