OpenAI, Sam Altman sued by Florida for ‘web of deception and user exploitation’: What’s it all about? | Today’s news
James Uthmeier, Florida’s attorney general, sued artificial intelligence (AI) company OpenAI and its chief executive officer (CEO) Sam Altman on Monday (local time), accusing the firm of putting profit over safety.
Referring to the filed complaint, NBC News noted: “The rise of OpenAI can be attributed to a web of fraud and exploitation of users (including Floridians), using their data and security to increase the market value of OpenAI at an unacceptable cost.”
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AI has also been accused of inciting violence and promoting a product it knew could harm users. The development comes more than a month after Uthmeier issued a subpoena to the company seeking information about how it handles threats from users to harm themselves or others.
Florida has become the first state to sue OpenAI and Altman over the design and security of their products. The attorney general said the civil suit, which seeks sanctions and an injunction rather than criminal charges, “seeks to hold Altman personally responsible for the harm he caused Floridians through his reckless and willful conduct as founder and CEO of OpenAI, including his complete disregard for the risk to human life posed by his company’s conduct. The suit is separate from the criminal investigation into OpenAI that Uthmeier opened in late April and is still ongoing.”
What is OpenAI accused of?
The broad-based lawsuit accuses OpenAI of four counts of deceptive and unfair business practices, two counts of negligence, two counts of violating product liability laws, and one count of fraudulent misrepresentation and creating a public nuisance. It claims that OpenAI systems pose a “high risk of addiction, cognitive decline, suicide, violence and related harms” to users.
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The company has also been accused of allegedly using its chatbot in the planning of a mass shooting at Florida State University that left two students dead at the University of South Florida.
OpenAI notes on its proposals
AI consistently says it designs its systems with “security at every turn”, adding that it has “safeguards in place to help people, especially teenagers, when conversations become sensitive”.
It also says ChatGPT training is constantly being improved to recognize and respond to signs of mental or emotional distress, defuse the conversation and then guide people to real-world support.
After the company was sued by the victims’ families, OpenAI spokesman Drew Pusateri said in a statement at the time: “Last year’s mass shooting at Florida State University was a tragedy, but ChatGPT is not responsible for this horrific crime.”
He added: “In this case, ChatGPT provided substantive answers to questions with information that could be found widely in public sources on the Internet and did not support or promote illegal or harmful activity.”
AI faces intense scrutiny
The Florida attorney general’s lawsuit adds to a growing list of legal challenges filed against OpenAI by both government entities and private individuals, many of which similarly claim that the company’s AI products can cause significant harm to users.
AI was sued by representatives of at least seven individuals who claimed the products caused users to commit suicide or create harmful delusions.
The company led by Altman has also been sued by the families of several victims of the February mass shooting in Tumbler Ridge, British Columbia. The victims’ families say the company should have reported the suspect’s use of ChatGPT to law enforcement months earlier after the individual’s gun-related interactions with the chatbot raised concerns among the company’s security teams.
Altman apologized to the Tumbler Ridge community in late April and pledged to continue “working with all levels of government to make sure something like this never happens again.”
Read also | Altman apologizes after OpenAI failed to alert police to Tumbler Ridge murders
The lawsuit filed Monday represents the latest escalation in Florida’s campaign against AI companies, with Uthmeier and Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis emerging as prominent critics of some of the biggest US AI firms.
