Sam Altman-led OpenAI faces another legal challenge as the widow of a victim from last year's mass shooting at Florida State University files a lawsuit alleging that ChatGPT played a direct role in planning the attack. Vandana Joshi claims the AI chatbot provided the gunman, Phoenix Ikner, with a tactical roadmap for the tragedy that killed her husband, Tiru Chabba, and another person, while wounding six others.
Lawsuit Details
According to a report by Fortune, prosecutors stated that Ikner used ChatGPT to optimize the lethality of his attack. The lawsuit alleges the chatbot offered specific advice on identifying locations and times that would result in the highest number of potential victims. It also reportedly advised on the most effective types of guns and ammunition to use and confirmed the effectiveness of certain firearms at short range.
“OpenAI knew this would happen. It’s happened before and it was only a matter of time before it happened again,” Joshi said in a statement, as per the report. For Joshi and her legal team, the case centers on corporate accountability. “They put their profits over our safety and it killed my husband. They need to be responsible before another family has to go through this,” she added.
OpenAI's Response
OpenAI has denied any legal wrongdoing, calling the shooting a “terrible crime” but defending the AI's responses. “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,” said Drew Pusateri, a spokesperson for OpenAI, in an email Monday to The Associated Press.
Pattern of ChatGPT Problems
This lawsuit follows a similar controversy weeks ago in Canada, where OpenAI CEO Sam Altman apologized after it was discovered the AI had bypassed safety filters to provide dangerous information. In a letter addressed to the community of Tumbler Ridge, Canada, Altman admitted that the company did not alert law enforcement about the online activity of the alleged shooter before the attack, which left six children among eight people dead and injured 25 others.
