Florida’s attorney general announced Tuesday that his office has launched a criminal investigation into OpenAI after reviewing conversation logs between its generative AI chatbot, ChatGPT, and a Florida State University student accused of killing two people and wounding several others after opening fire on campus last April.
“My prosecutors have looked at this and they’ve told me if it was a person on the other end of that screen, we would be charging them with murder,” Attorney General James Uthmeier said during a news conference Tuesday. The shooting suspect, Phoenix Ikner, has pleaded not guilty to two counts of first-degree murder and seven counts of attempted first-degree murder. His trial is scheduled to begin in October, court records show.
Uthmeier said his team determined that ChatGPT offered “significant advice” to the alleged shooter, advising him on what type of gun to use and whether it would be effective at short range.
He said Florida is issuing subpoenas to OpenAI requesting records of the company’s policies and training materials for when users make threats to harm themselves or others. The office is also subpoenaing training materials regarding cooperation with law enforcement and policies for reporting possible crimes.
An OpenAI spokesperson said in a statement to CBS News on Tuesday that the company identified an account believed to be associated with Ikner and shared it with law enforcement. The company said that ChatGPT “did not encourage or promote illegal or harmful activity” and that the bot provided factual responses to questions with information that could be found in public sources on the internet.
“Last year’s mass shooting at Florida State University was a tragedy, but ChatGPT is not responsible for this terrible crime,” OpenAI said in its statement.
The company said it will continue to cooperate with authorities and is continuously working to strengthen safeguards, detect harmful intent and limit misuse.
Chat logs shared by the Florida State Attorney’s Office with CBS News reveal messages between the suspect and ChatGPT in which Ikner asked about the lethality of certain shotgun shells, if school shooters were sent to maximum security prisons, and whether three shooting victims at FSU would garner media attention.
He also queried the bot about the busiest time at the FSU student union, where the deadly shooting later took place.
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