Florida sues OpenAI over harms caused by ChatGPT

U.S. Florida sues OpenAI, alleging company could have minimized harms caused by ChatGPT By Lauren Fichten Lauren Fichten Digital Reporter Lauren Fichten is a digital reporter at CBS News. Read Full Bio Lauren Fichten June 1, 2026 / 4:01 PM EDT / CBS News Add CBS News on Google On its parental resource page, OpenAI says ChatGPT is built with safety in mind."Not so," according to a lawsuit filed by Florida State Attorney General James Uthmeier on Monday. The phrase was accompanied by a screenshot of an OpenAI post about safety and transparency at the start of the complaint.Florida is the first state to sue OpenAI and CEO Sam Altman, alleging the company prioritized profit and speed over user safety and that the harms caused by ChatGPT "are substantial and outweigh any benefits of ChatGPT use.""People are getting hurt, parents are getting deceived, and they need to pay for it," Uthmeier said in a press conference Monday morning.In an 83-page suit, Uthmeier says that OpenAI failed to provide warnings about the risks of ChatGPT, which the suit claims can cause addiction and behavioral harm, and said the company could have used alternative designs to minimize harms by the chatbot. The suit says the company either knew or should have known that its design encourages self-harm and violence, among other things harmful to Floridians — particularly children and teens. It alleges Altman knew the dangers of ChatGPT, but ignored them. "The threat of ChatGPT to Floridians (and humanity) is not lost on either OpenAI or Altman," the suit reads. The lawsuit alleges that OpenAI is driven by an "insatiable quest to win the AI arms race and amass large fortunes, despite knowing the danger of ChatGPT." It claims the company leverages user data to boost its market value "at unacceptable costs" and that the rise of the company is "attributable to a web of deceit and the exploitation of users."The suit lays out several cases where ChatGPT was linked to incidents with devasta...