Florida is the first state in the nation to sue an artificial intelligence company for harming users.
SEBRING, Fla. (CN) – Florida Attorney General James Uthmeier filed a first-of-its-kind lawsuit against OpenAI and its CEO on Monday, accusing the creator of ChatGPT of putting profit over public safety.
In 83 pages complaintfiled in rural Highlands County, Uthmeier says the company ignored warnings from experts about the program’s potential to facilitate suicides and “lethal rampages,” all while gathering data to increase its market share in the artificial intelligence arms race.
“OpenAI and Altman ignored internal and external safety warnings, put children at grave risk and allowed a dangerous product to reach millions of Floridians,” Uthmeier said at a news conference announcing the lawsuit.
The complaint includes claims of unfair trade practices, negligence, fraudulent misrepresentation and a public nuisance. It also seeks to hold CEO Sam Altman personally liable for unspecified damages.
OpenAI did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
In his remarks, Uthmeier pointed to last year’s mass shooting at Florida State University that left two people dead and seven injured. Prosecutors say the gunman used ChatGPT to help plan the attack, including figuring out the best time and place to maximize casualties and what weapons to use.
“If there was a human being on the other end of that conversation, we would charge them with conspiracy to commit murder,” Uthmeier said.
Attorney General OPEN a criminal investigation against the company over these claims in April.
“People are getting hurt, parents are being misled, and they have to pay for it,” Uthmeier said. “They have to pay for it by opening their checkbook and changing the program to provide parental controls and we’re not putting our kids at risk.”
Uthmeier called the lawsuit “monumental” and predicted other states would soon follow.
In addition to security concerns, the complaint blames OpenAI for contributing to “cognitive decline” and “behavioral addiction.”
OpenAI’s website shows the positive role artificial intelligence can play in users’ lives, the attorney general notes, but “these ads do not disclose that ChatGPT may be fallible, may make mistakes, or may provide false, nonsensical, or hallucinatory information.”
“This unreliability can lead to serious consequences throughout society,” Uthmeier writes. “For example, the court system is fed up with lawyers who rely on ChatGPT to conduct cursory legal research only to later learn that ChatGPT ‘hallucinates’ and generates false but seemingly realistic lawsuits. This ChatGPT-assisted research has led to lawyers in Florida and across the country being sanctioned by courts.”
OpenAI already faces a number of lawsuits from individuals, including the parents of those killed in the Florida FSU shooting over the FSU shooting. The company is being sued for giving faulty medical advice that led to a drug overdose in a Texas teenager and led another teen to California to kill his mother. ChatGPT is too blame for helping plan a mass shooting in Canada.
On its website, the company addresses security concerns by keeping programmers “teaching our AI right from wrong, filtering harmful content and responding sensitively.”
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