Florida’s top prosecutor is to launch a criminal investigation into how the tech company OpenAI and its software tool ChatGPT may influence users’ threats of harm to themselves or others, including whether it “offered significant advice” to a gunman accused of conducting a mass shooting in the state last year.
State attorney general James Uthmeier said at a news conference on Tuesday that his office is expanding an examination of OpenAI, saying a “criminal investigation is necessary” and the state had issued subpoenas to the $852bn California-based tech firm.
“If this were a person on the other end of the screen, we would be charging them with murder,” Uthmeier said during an event in Tampa.
Earlier this month, Uthmeier, an appointee of Florida’s governor, Ron DeSantis, announced an investigation into the artificial intelligence company over potential national security and safety concerns.
But the issuing of subpoenas to OpenAI is a marked escalation that comes after lawyers spoke up on behalf of the family of Robert Morales, one of two fatalities in a shooting at Florida State University last April that also injured six on the Tallahassee campus.
The lawyers said they had learned the shooter was in “constant communication with ChatGPT” ahead of the shooting, and that the chatbot “may have advised the shooter how to commit these heinous crimes”.
Phoenix Ikner, 20 at the time of the shooting, allegedly communicated frequently with the ChatGPT prior to the campus attack, allegedly asking for detailed information about the operation of guns and ammunition, where he could find the most students, and how the nation might react.
Ikner is expected to go on trial in October on charges of first-degree murder and attempted first-degree murder in the shooting. He has pleaded not guilty.
A lawsuit filed on behalf of the Morales family is among several claims brought against OpenAI and Google alleging that their AI chatbots have played a part in encouraging people to take their lives or the lives of others.
Uthmeier said at the press conference that a review of communications revealed that “ChatGPT offered significant advice to the shooter before he committed such heinous crimes”.
He added “that the chatbot advised the shooter on what type of gun to use, on which ammo went with which gun, on whether or not a gun would be useful in short range”.
“Just because this is a chatbot in AI does not mean that there is not criminal culpability,” Uthmeier said, adding that his office will “look at who knew what, designed what or should have done what”.
A spokesperson for OpenAI, Kate Waters, said in a statement to NBC News: “Last year’s mass shooting at Florida State University was a tragedy, but ChatGPT is not responsible for this terrible crime.
“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.”
The company said it continues to cooperate with authorities and had shared information with law enforcement after identifying a ChatGPT account believed to be associated with the suspect.
The announcement of the dialing-up of the investigation in Florida came two days after the worst mass shooting in the US in two years, when eight children were killed in Shreveport, Louisiana, on Sunday, in what the authorities have identified as a violent domestic incident. The father of seven of the children, Shamar Elkins, was shot dead by police after being identified as the gunman.
