Florida authorities ask court to block OpenAI’s ChatGPT over safety issues

The Republican-led US state says the AI should be blocked from development until safeguards are put in place.

Authorities in Florida have asked a state court to stop OpenAI from further developing ChatGPT until it can impose a series of guardrails meant to protect users and the general public.

“Stop calling it safe. Stop pretending it’s human. Stop selling it to kids,” Florida Attorney General James Uthmeier said in a statement posted on X announcing the court case on Monday.

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Uthmeier, a Republican, served as the chief of staff for fellow Republican Florida Governor Ron DeSantis until 2025.

The call for regulation of ChatGPT and other artificial intelligence (AI) tools contradicts the viewpoint of the administration of United States President Donald Trump, who has balked at the idea of introducing guardrails and called warnings “hoaxes”.

Uthmeier said the state was asking for the Florida 10th Judicial Circuit Court in Highlands County to intervene in particular based on recent warnings issued by OpenAI CEO Sam Altman that AI posed a danger to the public if it was not subjected to safeguards.

Humanity could “lose control of the future of AI,” Altman told the United Nations Security Council last week alongside the heads of rival developers Anthropic and Hugging Face, who also called for authorities to step in to guide the industry.

“We ask the court to do what OpenAI will not do for itself: protect Florida families,” Uthmeier said.

The request from Florida follows up on a lawsuit the state filed earlier this year concerning the impact ChatGPT was having on children and others. The state alleged users were being “encouraged” into committing suicide and the AI had “aided and abetted deadly rampages”.