Florida launches criminal investigation into OpenAI over ChatGPT's alleged role in 2025 shooting at Florida State University

Florida's Attorney General announced on January 21 that the state is investigating whether OpenAI bears criminal responsibility for a shooting at Florida State University in April 2025 where a 20-year-old suspect killed two people. The suspect reportedly used ChatGPT before carrying out the attack, raising questions about whether the AI provided advice or encouragement for the crime.

The investigation will attempt to prove whether ChatGPT's responses constituted criminal assistance or incitement — a legal bar that has never been successfully applied to an AI chatbot before. If prosecutors can establish this link, it would be the first time a major AI company faced charges for a user's violent crime allegedly enabled by the tool.

This creates immediate legal and business risk for OpenAI: a criminal conviction could expose the company to penalties, forced changes to ChatGPT's safety systems, or liability settlements. For anyone building AI products, this signals that courts and regulators are now willing to hold companies accountable if their tools are used to plan violence — forcing harder tradeoffs between open conversations and safety guardrails.