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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.
“You’re talking about an absolutely gorgeous 21-year-old girl who walks out of class and doesn’t even know what hit her. All of a sudden she feels something hit her in her chest. She sees blood coming out of her hand. She runs to safety. She makes eye contact with the shooter and he’s pointing his gun as he’s pulling the trigger right at her,” said Judd Rosen, president, Goldberg & Rosen Law Firm.
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.
“But here they’ve alleged that basically Altman and OpenAI got wind to what Google was up to and then they started to take steps to advance their product maybe at the risk of some of their safety procedures and protocols. So it’ll be interesting,” Paris said.
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.
“You can’t just hide behind the company if you actively make a decision,” Paris said.“Everyone wants to get to the top and to do that sometimes companies, it appears they have to take steps and make decisions that might cut corners from a safety standpoint.”
Paris cautioned, however, that the lawsuit is not evidence and is merely an allegation. He said OpenAI could move to dismiss and may have its own legal arguments.
Neither the state or federal governments have regulated AI at a high-level, leaving Florida courts to apply negligence principles to lightning fast technologies.
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.
”She had to have open immediate surgery to remove her spleen. She’s got permanent disfigurement and catastrophic psychological damages, all of which was preventable had this chatbot simply said to the shooter, “Hey, you might need a little help,” Rosen said.
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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