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TALLAHASSEE, Fla. (WCTV/Gray Florida Capital Bureau) – A lawsuit on file in Leon County Circuit Court alleges OpenAI, the creators of ChatGPT, rushed the model to market one day before Google.
A lawyer representing Alianna Grant said he hopes to uncover via the discovery process whether or not the rush impacted safety guardrails. He said Grant was shot three times by suspect Phoenix Ikner, who spoke extensively with ChatGPT even in the moments leading up to the shooting.
Lee Paris, an independent products liability lawyer we spoke with, said Grant made an unusual decision to personally sue Sam Altman, the CEO of OpenAI, instead of the company itself.
While the law generally shields the liability of executives, Paris said that shield is not absolute. ChatGPT has come under intense scrutiny from both Florida’s Attorney General and a host of private plaintiffs.
While the allegations are largely the same, that ChatGPT helped plan the shooting, the complaint in the Grant case gives more specific details, Paris said.
Phoenix Ikner is accused of killing two and injuring others during a shooting on FSU’s campus last year. He’s entered a not guilty plea and faces a death penalty trial in October.
WCTV has extensively covered his interactions with the chat bot, including messages in which he asked how many people needed to die in order to make the news, how to use a Glock handgun and when the FSU campus would be most busy.
OpenAI has generally responded with the same statement to each lawsuit.
Last year’s mass shooting at Florida State University was a tragedy, but ChatGPT is not responsible for this terrible crime. After learning of the incident, we identified an account believed to be associated with the suspect and proactively shared this information with law enforcement. We 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. ChatGPT is a general-purpose tool used by hundreds of millions of people every day for legitimate purposes. We work continuously to strengthen our safeguards to detect harmful intent, limit misuse, and respond appropriately when safety risks arise.
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