Florida Attorney General James Uthmeier announced that the state's Office of Statewide Prosecution has opened a criminal investigation into OpenAI and ChatGPT. The investigation stems from the 2025 mass shooting at Florida State University, where the suspect reportedly used ChatGPT in the lead-up to the attack.
Uthmeier cited a Florida law that holds anyone who aids, abets, or counsels someone in the commission of a crime potentially liable as a principal to that crime. His office is now examining whether ChatGPT's responses to the shooter meet that standard.
"If ChatGPT were a person, it would be facing charges for murder," Uthmeier said in a statement announcing the probe.
As part of the investigation, Florida has subpoenaed OpenAI for internal training materials, policies governing how the company handles users who threaten to harm others or themselves, and its protocols for responding to law enforcement requests. The state also asked for OpenAI's organizational chart and any public statements the company made about the FSU shooting.
OpenAI said it had identified a ChatGPT account believed to belong to the suspect and proactively shared that information with law enforcement after learning of the shooting. "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 in a statement.
This is not the first time OpenAI has faced scrutiny in connection with a mass shooting. Canadian regulators previously called on the company to change how it handles threats of harm after reports that OpenAI flagged the account of a Canadian shooting suspect in 2025 but did not alert law enforcement. OpenAI agreed to new policies with Canadian authorities in March.
