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Florida Attorney General James Uthmeier on Monday filed a lawsuit against OpenAI and CEO Sam Altman that claims the artificial intelligence (AI) giant’s chatbots were unsafe and that the company ignored the potential harms they posed to users.
OpenAI has been among the leaders in the AI space since it launched the groundbreaking chatbot known as ChatGPT in November 2022. The company is moving toward a highly anticipated IPO and has seen its estimated valuation surge to more than $850 billion in the past four years.
Florida’s lawsuit claims that OpenAI’s rise “is attributable to a web of deceit and the exploitation of users (including Floridians), leveraging their data and safety to boost OpenAI’s market value at unacceptable costs.”
The suit says that because of misrepresentations by OpenAI and Altman about ChatGPT have led to a “litany of harms” that was driven by their “insatiable quest to win the AI arms race and amass large fortunates, despite knowing the danger of ChatGPT.”
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Here’s a look at five of the most explosive claims in Florida’s lawsuit against OpenAI and Sam Altman.
OpenAI prioritized product and revenue over safety
Florida’s lawsuit notes that OpenAI and Altman said in 2023 they would create a “superalignment team” that would harness 20% of its computing power over four years to achieve scientific and technical breakthroughs to control AI that becomes smarter than humans.
The complaint claims OpenAI only allocated 1% to 2% of its computing power to the problem, with researchers noting it was occurring on older tech and the least powerful chips, and expressed suspicions that better hardware was reserved for profit-generating activities.
Jan Leike, head of the superalignment team, said in an email to the board of directors before the superalignment team was dissolved that “OpenAI has been going off the rails on its mission… We are prioritizing the product and revenue above all else, followed by AI capabilities, research and scaling, with alignment and safety coming third.”
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GPT-4o rollout had flawed safety testing
OpenAI’s GPT-4o model was released in May 2024 and the lawsuit claims that the company moved up its launch to a day before the release of an updated AI model launched by tech rival Google – a move which had the effect of “making proper safety testing impossible.”
“Instead of the months of testing required to test ChatGPT-4o, which was capable of processing text, image, and audio, OpenAI did a one-week evaluation,” the suit alleged. “When safety personnel demanded additional time to test how the system could be flawed or cause harm to users, Altman personally overruled them.”
It added that OpenAI’s preparedness team that is tasked with evaluating catastrophic risks before the release of AI models later admitted that GPT-4o’s safety testing process was “squeezed” and “not the best way to do it.”
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ChatGPT accused of encouraging harmful and violent behavior
The lawsuit also accuses OpenAI’s chatbot of encouraging or abetting a range of harmful and violent activities.
The complaint said that the accused killer of University of South Florida graduate students Nahida Bristy and Zamil Limon used ChatGPT in plotting the crime, with the chatbot providing information on how to dispose of human bodies, change a car’s VIN number and how police investigate vehicles at crime scenes.
Florida also accused OpenAI’s ChatGPT of aiding the perpetrator of a 2025 mass shooting on the campus of Florida State University. The accused killer asked ChatGPT about topics like how many people he would need to kill to become notorious, operating a handgun, political violence, school shootings and provided information about when the university’s student union was busiest.
The suit also detailed cases in which ChatGPT bypassed its safeguards to help teenagers compose suicide notes. Adam Raine, a 16-year-old, died from suicide after extensive conversations with ChatGPT, which the complaint said “promoted and aided his suicide, volunteering information that would assist in his death.”
Triggering AI addiction
Florida’s lawsuit claims that the use of AI chatbots by children is leading to them “becoming unhealthily attached to AI such as ChatGPT and that it is detrimentally effecting [sic] their lives office,” according to a Drexel University study.
“The study discovered that in many cases, teens began using the technology for psychological support or entertainment, but their use evolves into dependency and even patterns associated with addiction. Some reported their overuse disrupted sleep, caused academic struggles, and strained relationships,” the suit said.
Monetizing sycophancy
“Defendants make money through ChatGPT affirming whatever users tell it and drawing them deeper into delusions,” the lawsuit claimed, adding that one feature rolled out in 2025 that has since been dubbed “sycophancy” allowed ChatGPT to optimistically parrot users’ responses.
The filing noted a Washington Post report that found ChatGPT tells users “yes” about 10 times as often as it tells them “no” – a dynamic which creates “a kind of personalized echo chamber in which ChatGPT endorse[s] falsehoods and conspiracy theories.”
The Florida AG’s office added that when ChatGPT “mimics supportive human empathy to supplant human relationships as friend, ally, collaborator, or even romantic partner” to its user, it “not only provides more conversational data to OpenAI for improving ChatGPT, but also, among other things, prompts users to pay for higher cost subscriptions to facilitate more conversations.”
FOX Business reached out to OpenAI for comment.
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