ChatGPT under investigation after ‘offering significant advice’ to Florida school shooter
ChatGPT under investigation after ‘offering significant advice’ to Florida school shooter
https://www.aol.com/entertainment/chatgpt-under-investigation-offering-significant-140600044.html
Publish Date: 2026-04-26 02:29:00
Source Domain: www.aol.com
ChatGPT under criminal investigation ‘after offering advice to Florida school shooter’
Florida’s Attorney General’s Office opened a criminal investigation into ChatGPT for allegedly “offering significant advice” to the suspected 2025 Florida State University shooter before killing two and injuring six others.
Florida Attorney General James Uthmeier announced Tuesday that his office launched a criminal investigation into ChatGPT and its parent company, OpenAI, in tandem with the probe into the suspected FSU shooter earlier this month. The attorney general’s office alleges that the shooter, identified as 20-year-old FSU student Phoenix Ikner, heavily utilized the artificial intelligence service to assist him in carrying out the “heinous crimes.”
Ikner is accused of opening fire near the student union at the public Tallahassee campus last April, during which two adults were killed and six others were injured, including at least one student.
He is currently sitting in jail awaiting trial for multiple murder and attempted murder charges.
The attorney general’s office alleges that Ikner asked ChatGPT about the power of a specific gun at a short range and what ammunition to use for it after obtaining more than 200 messages between the suspect and the AI chatbot.
OpenAI’s Sam Altman is the CEO of ChatGPT (Image: Getty Images)
On the day of the shooting, the suspect allegedly asked the chatbot when the student union would be the busiest and how the nation would react to a school shooting.
“My prosecutors have looked at this, and they’ve told me if it was a person on the other end of the screen, we would be charging them with murder,” Uthmeier, a Republican, said at a news conference in Tampa.
The criminal case against OpenAI could be potentially historic landmark case amid the global arms race and rapid development of AI technology, Uthemier acknowledged Tuesday.
He explained his office is looking to determine whether “human beings may have been involved in the design, management…
